


Radio Tower

by HyperLittleNori (Shiguresan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Anal Sex, Angst, Frottage, Full Shift Werewolves, Gay Sex, Happy Ending, Hope, M/M, Pack, Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip, Rimming, Romance, Scenting, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Suspense, Teen Wolf AU, Touch-Starved, Violence, Werewolves, dystopian au, post-apocalypse au, sterek, survival AU, werewolves are known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-06-05 10:59:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 130,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15169244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresan/pseuds/HyperLittleNori
Summary: Inspired by the concept and stunning art by the talentedSuis0uon Tumblr.Everything was different. The world he knew was gone. It’d been a long time since he’d started thinking he was probably one of the last humans on earth, that out there the only sentient beings were those that would devour him whole. He wasn’t sure why he continued with the radio broadcasts, continued to talk into nothingness. The only explanation was that there was a spark of hope in him yet that he wasn’t alone. The lonely safety Stiles has built around an old radio tower in the middle of nowhere is about to be broken. Stiles isn’t sure if Derek is a harbinger of chaos or hope at the end of the world.





	1. Nature's Song

So the first chapter in particular starts quite heavy (well it begins with Stiles alone post apocalypse so that’s the way the dice fell) but Derek, when he arrives, unwittingly restores a sense of hope that I think will lift the story so it won’t be entirely doom and gloom. I think this story is about hope rather than loss and I promise a happy ending if you bear with me – for all who we love. Promise! Please enjoy and I hope I do Suis0u’s beautiful artwork and concept justice – super nervous about sharing!

 

_Inspired by[the concept and stunning art ](http://suis0u.tumblr.com/post/173166983668/he-could-still-remember-the-days-like-it-was)by the talented _[ Suis0u](http://suis0u.tumblr.com/) _on Tumblr_.

 

* * *

 

[ ](http://suis0u.tumblr.com/post/173166983668/he-could-still-remember-the-days-like-it-was)

 

Chapter One

**Nature’s Song**

 

 

 The whole world around him was unrecognisable and yet some things were still the same. Stiles hated the cold. He hated the cold and he hated the wet and so it was perhaps odd that thunderstorms were a phenomenon he longed for nowadays. It was the only one of nature’s songs that drowned out the deafening silence that filled his days. Stiles sat on the old wooden chair at what he called the broadcast desk. He stared out the poorly repaired window at the world, his long fingers dragging back and forth over the top of the currently inactive radio.

 

 The forest noises were lost to the howling wind, its claws crashing against the wooden structure of the old radio tower. The building groaned but held firm, unbowed by the strength of the storm. There was a comfort in that, the melody of the little creaks and grumbles of wood, in the little cracks in the corners of some of the windows, the way his chair squeaked just a little as he shifted, never still, even now, after all these years. The noises were like the complaints of an old friend, bothersome yet a welcome reprieve from the quiet.

 

 The sky was dark in the world beyond his little sanctuary. There was no lightning tonight but the rumbles of the storm were loud and rolling overhead almost constantly. He couldn’t even hear the low hum of the small generator. It was beautiful. It was knowing that, if there was still anyone out there, they’d be listening to this same storm and at moments like that, he felt a little less alone.

 

 As the thunder slowly rumbled away from him, he leaned back in his chair and sighed as he stared at the radio, tracing the outer edges with longing but no hope. It wasn’t hope that kept him going, it was routine. He always broadcast three times a day at the same times but tonight’s broadcast would be pretty pointless with the tail end of the storm still rattling the antenna and distorting anything he said, even if there was anyone out there listening. He sighed and even though it was pointless, pulled the receiver toward him and clicked the well-worn switch.

 

 “This is Mischief broadcasting. Current location _Salvada Forest Radio Tower_.” The old worn sign below at the base of the ladder told him as much but there was also a slightly faded map taking up most of the wall over the radio station too. There were currently little pins all over it, all connected with a single line of red string, the end of which hung loose to one side. A neat, track of his path all the way from _Beacon Hills_ , the places he’d survived before he’d stumbled upon this place. The radio had been too attractive an opportunity to leave and so he’d made his base here. It’d worked so far. He’d never been able to stay in one place so long. Close to two years now. It felt longer.

 

 “e’There kldsakgaagmjnnj”””kkksdgaIs anyone out there?” He murmured. The crackle of radio silence was his only reply. As routine dictated he offered the information three more times before letting his mouth rattle. He liked to think maybe there were people out there listening, even if they couldn’t answer, couldn’t reach him. He sometimes talked about his day, though it wasn’t often all that different from the last. He got up, ate, washed in the stream running nearby and checked on the little greenhouse he’d managed to establish. He did maintenance on the tower, washed his clothes, headed up to the lake for the day’s water, tried to catch something for dinner and then headed back.

 

 In the early days, he had hiked out to try and map his area. When the Jeep had been working he’d even driven to the nearest towns the map had shown for supplies but it had died long ago now. His baby had coughed up the last dribble of fuel he’d managed to scrape up on his way back with the supplies he’d actually gathered for the construction of the greenhouse. The flourishing vegetables were testament to how long ago that had been. Sometimes on his worse days he made the two hour trek back to the derelict Jeep to sit in the seat and just think. Melancholy clung to the seats and the memories, so he didn’t let himself make the trip often. He couldn’t let himself break now.

 

 Now each day was mostly this. His routine interrupted only by meal times and the regular broadcasts. A look out the window showed only trees as far as the eye could see. In the distance he could make out some mountains but there were no lights, no signs of life. When the storm rolled away there were only the soft sounds of nocturnal forest animals, a fox sometimes or an owl calling balefully.

 

 Silence.

 

 “…it’s funny, I guess,” he found himself telling the radio. Most days he wondered if his rambling, his tendency to talk even when there was nothing to say had been what had kept him sane, if a man with a brain-to-mouth filter would’ve lost his mind long ago. “I don’t like to hunt animals if I can help it, even after all these years. I mean I can, and I do but it’s…” He winced, wrinkling his nose. He sprawled back in his chair, head hanging back. He closed his eyes as he held the receiver near enough to talk into it.

 

 “I suppose fishing just reminds me of those trips with my mom and dad when I was a kid. They’d take me up to _Beacon Lake_ and we’d camp out and fish. Plus blood and stuff has never really been something I was good with. I’ve got a weak stomach. I’m not ashamed to admit that, own your weaknesses and all that. I can’t skin anything without retching and after that you’re sort of less hungry…it’s veggies and fish for me most days. The lake is thriving anyway and I’m pretty handy at making my own fries by now. Or, well, boiled potatoes really, but you know…”

 

 He talked about anything and everything. Even before the breakdown of civilisation as he knew it, before it’d all fallen apart he’d been used to talking away while the other party of the conversation either listened or tried to tune him out. Even his dad had gotten pretty handy at it.

 

 Leaning back in the chair like this with his eyes closed, he could almost be in his childhood bedroom, chatting to Scott on Skype or on the Xbox. He smiled to himself. In the last decade or so, the memories had stopped hurting most days and had just become a comfort, a dream of happier times. Most days he didn’t feel sad or depressed he just felt…lonely. He felt if he could find someone, just one someone to mark his days with, someone who would talk back once in a while, he could do this.

 

 He could.

 

 With a sigh he yawned and decided to give it up for the night. “This is Mischief. It’s been sixteen years since the end of the world.” Sixteen years since all he’d had to concern himself with were high school and unrequited love. Sixteen years since he’d sat on his couch back in _Beacon Hills_ with his scrawny, fourteen-year-old legs folder up under him and his dad had walked in through the front door with a haunted look in his eyes. When it’d all started. Eight years since he’d last seen his dad. Five years since he’d seen the last living human being. Two since he’d seen the last sentient being.

 

All was quiet. There were only monsters left now, roaming free like the stuff of nightmares, unchallenged. He was alone.

 

 “This is Mischief, of _Salvada Forest Radio Tower_ , signing off for tonight.”

 

 With a sigh he pulled the blanket he’d been wrapped in tighter round him and slid under the heavy layer of blankets on the bed. It was a double but it felt anything but luxurious. Still he’d slept in worse places and at some point over the last couple of years, this had become home. He closed his eyes and dreamt of disembodied voices over the radio, reminiscent of those last police broadcasts he’d heard over the radio in his Jeep before everything had gone quiet. The ones that had said something worse than werewolves had slunk out of the shadows when they’d staged a rebellion on humanity and were killing them off too, that they were falling faster than the humans had. 

 

 When he woke the next day, the birds in the trees around the tower were singing as if the world hadn’t ended and the sun was shining. Beyond that, things were still as silent as the radio had fallen after that last broadcast. He was pretty sure he was alone.

 

*

 

Sunlight danced across the surface of the clear, pure water, reflecting a myriad of dazzling colours like a sea of diamonds. Their light reflected on Stiles’s face as he stared into the surface, allowing himself a moment of stillness, of contemplation. He didn’t think he looked that much older really, and yet he was thirty years old and definitely changed. His hair was getting too long again, a careless disarray accompanied by day-old stubble and a dashed broken scar that tore down from his eyebrow across his cheek toward his jaw. It was old now, but still angry red and he thought wistfully of how it might have mattered, once upon a time, before the world fell into chaos.

 

 He set the last full container aside and leaned down to scoop some water into his mouth. It was only a short journey back but it’d be difficult still with the containers full. Plus, he had the vegetables to tend to yet.

 

 He thanked his mother for her love of her vegetable patch and his father for teaching him to shoot and generally bullying him into helping with the DIY round the house for his survival thus far. Still, as someone who’d been too clumsy to get on the lacrosse team in high school, too unfocussed to get more than average grades despite his excellent mind, Stiles had wondered at first how it was that he’d out-survived everyone else. It was years after he’d lost his dad, after he’d begun his quest to find something, anything to resemble safety that he had started to realise how it was that he’d managed to do so.

 

 Perhaps solitude or stress or whatever had long ago started to take its toll, had made him imagine things, but ever since he’d started to run he’d been sure there was _something_ in him, a magic of sorts that just made his skin _hum_ when something supernatural drew near. And help him in weird, tiny but pivotal ways. It was hard to judge what was impossible nowadays, after all he’d seen.

 

 But how else could the little generator still be running? The little fridge that should’ve surely died long before he even turned up but had hummed back to life when he’d turned it on? How else could he have made such a variety of vegetables grow in the same temperature, all year round? Bloom again and again without fail? How did the candles burn so slow that some nights he wondered if they weren’t magic themselves?

 

 It had started with a little prickle up the back of his neck, a ripple of almost like the drag of an icy fingertip across his skin, the feeling you got when you weren’t alone, even though the world around you was still. What followed was a bone-deep sense of panic, of urgency to flee. Not long after he’d found himself alone in the world, having long since realised the few humans that were left back then could be as dangerous as the beasts that had killed the rest, he was constantly on the move. On his trek to find somewhere safe to settle, he’d come across a bottle of unopened _Jack_ in a town near _Sacramento_ and he’d been mostly incoherent, drowning his sorrows. That night he’d woken up hung over with the unexplainable urge to flee. He’d narrowly escaped the bone-faced creature who’d slashed his face.

 

 He called it the ‘feeling’ because that was the only way to explain it. It’d saved his life on many an occasion but it’d never manifested further than that, never became anything more. He wasn’t even sure how he was making things last longer or stretch further, if it was his imagination that he was doing it because whenever he tried to do something more, it failed.

 

 Perhaps he was just slowly losing his mind.

 

 Water splashed across his chin as he swallowed and he wiped it away with the back of his hand, but as he moved to sit back on his heels, he felt it. He stilled, resisting the urge to whirl around and draw attention to his awareness. He tried to steady his breathing and hoped whatever it was couldn’t hear his heartbeat. Slowly he reached down for another drink, cupping water in his hands, but as he lowered his head to sip, he cast his gaze out across the lake. There was movement there, just beyond the edge of trees that lined the far bank, just a hundred yards or so from him.

 

 Did he have time to reach for his crossbow?

 

 He swallowed. There was a beat of stillness, then he lunged. A snarl filled the air and all Stiles saw was a blur of movement, a flash of red eyes in the grey morning dimness and he fired. The bolt tore through the air with a sharp hiss. The shadow surged forward, slamming into him like a speeding train and sending him sprawling back in the dirt. Stiles landed with a thump that smashed the air from his lungs. He snarled, panic making him like an animal himself and he snatched up one of the bolts that had scattered from their holster when he’d fallen, stabbing it hard into the creature’s shoulder.

 

 The beast roared, writhing over him, spittle flecking Stiles’s face. It was like a wolf, only bigger, its shoulders and back tight with muscle beneath jet black fur. There hadn’t been time for information to circulate on the creatures that had ended humanity, there were varied species, each nastier than the last, but this, this was one of the things that had started it all.

 

 He knew something of werewolves, he’d faced a couple in his time. It was an alpha, Stiles gauged by the red of his eyes. Stiles only had a moment to reel from the shock, because he’d thought they were all gone too, just like the humans, but then the wolf bared his teeth.

 

 Stiles scrambled for another bolt and this time aimed for the wolf’s throat. It turned its head just in time to snap its fangs around the shaft of the bolt, the snap of teeth so close to Stiles’s fingers making him drop the weapon. He snatched up the entire crossbow instead, slamming it hard into the beast’s face. He thought the steel limb must’ve caught it right in the eye because it howled and reared back in shock, pawing at its face on instinct in spite of its ability to heal, unable to stop the urge to reach for its eyes, just like a human.

 

 Rolling onto his belly, Stiles crawled out from under the beast and bolted for the trees. He’d been here for so long, knew this territory like the back of his hand and yet it all flew from his mind as he ran, along with every safety precaution he’d instilled in himself since he was left without medical back-up. The incline up into the trees was shallow but the dip on the opposite side was steep, the ground still soft from the rain the night before and after all this time it betrayed him. His foot slipped, gave way beneath him and his ankle gave a sickening, hot twist and he fell. The sludge flew up as he tumbled down through the undergrowth and he couldn’t help but let out a cry of winded agony as he slammed, hard into one of the trees at the base of the hill.

 

 Everything was spinning. The world was ringing with the impact of the tree and his entire body felt numb and hot all over. There was no pain, only disorientating movement. Stiles gasped for breath and squinted hard. He needed to get up, he needed to _move_.

 

 A snarl ripped through everything, sharper, thinner than the full-bodied roar of the wolf from before and Stiles _just_ managed to twist his head to the side in time to see a worryingly familiar shape. There wasn’t a lot of big prey in the area so Stiles had only seen a mountain lion here once or twice, and even then it had slunk away from a distance, not liking the sight of him apparently. But it was a lot closer now and there was no time to wonder why. It hunched its lean body ready to pounce, ears slicked back and faced twisted with a warning growl.

 

 Stiles jerked, pushing all his weight against the tree, levering himself upright but the world didn’t right itself. His ankle throbbed and the lion lunged, swiping at his torso. A spray of blood painted the air and pain bloomed through his body. Stiles choked, the impact with the tree still with him and he keeled sideways, landing with a thump. He jerked, willing his body into movement, to _anything_ but all he saw was the flash of the mountain lion’s fangs, then a dash of black fur that did not belong to the cat.

 

 The world twisted a final time just as the deep, resonating roar of the wolf shook everything and Stiles’s eyes closed.

 

*

_It all started when a group, no a_ pack _of werewolves that called themselves the alpha pack revealed themselves for what they were. Backed by a startling following of beta wolves, they tore through an airport, a shopping mall, big places with widespread coverage until they were just everywhere. Werewolves started to take everything, take the world back from humanity and overwhelm it with lycanthropy, make it theirs once and for all._

_At first everyone in Stiles’s class had thought it was a publicity stunt of some new group of fanatics, but within weeks lycanthropy spread like a plague through all the major cities. It soon became apparent that many humans weren’t susceptible to the bite. Whether the alphas had known that or just hadn’t cared was unclear, but many of the bitten died from incompatibility from the venom, while the few that successfully changed were swallowed up by the chaos, likely trapped by the power of their alphas._

_It was like a zombie apocalypse movie except the dead didn’t rise again, they stayed dead, leaving humanity decimated within weeks, forcing the smaller towns to try and fend for themselves, keep the wolves that supported the alpha pack’s desire for supremacy out. They’d had a good run in_ Beacon Hills _, managed to last longer than most. Even then, they’d believed somehow they’d stick it out, that nothing would ever reach them there._

_When things took a turn for the worse, when the chaos reached them at last, Stiles’s dad had helped to form a convoy up north, where there the last radio and television reports had said there was a safe settlement, a last resistance. But by then, werewolves weren’t the only thing that had stepped out from the shadows._

 

_There wasn’t even a name for the things that came after. They were the stuff of nightmares. They came in darkness, most of their towering forms enshrouded in shadow except for the pale bone of their heads. His dad tried to stay, tried to save who he could but then one of the creatures rounded on Stiles._

_Stiles could still remember those moments, the fleeting seconds where his whole life had ended. The makeshift camp had been ablaze, the people from his hometown dropping in the carnage and he’d met his dad’s gaze around the thing with a skull for a face. Piercing red glowed in its gaping eye-sockets. It didn’t approach so much as stalk him as the world burned._

_All Stiles remembered were his dad’s eyes, the desperation in them as he’d raised his gun and screamed. “Get away from my son!”_

_Whether the bone man understood words or not, it kept coming. A gunshot ripped through the air and Stiles flinched. The creature whirled around, a great sweeping strike of its long arms sending Stiles sprawling in the dirt as it went. He choked as he inhaled the ash-strewn earth, watched, dazed and useless as the beast approached his father, watched as bullet after bullet did nothing to stop it. Then the panicking stampede crashed passed him, someone kicked him unwittingly in the head and the world fell dark._

_When he awoke, it was to the smell of ash and blood and death. Something, he suspected remnants of one of the burned out tents had blown over him, but it fell away like a singed blanket as he stared around at the dying fire and the bones, the charred remains of the bodies of the people of_ Beacon Hills _. His people._

_Stiles had found his dad’s badge among the ashes._

_Like other supernatural creatures, the bone men had followed the werewolves out of the darkness, but unlike any others, they seemed beyond reason or compassion, beyond humanity. Stiles wondered if they held the world now, or what there was left of it._

 

*

 

 Stiles knew pain before he knew any other sensation. His body felt heavy with weariness and discomfort, his head throbbing and neck tight as it all came rushing back. He squinted his eyes open, wincing at the glare of the evening sun coming in through the window. The burning, sinking orange light was like fire in his eyes and pain flared at the back of his head as they struggled to adjust. But even as they did, he caught sight of the shadow seated in the chair by the window.

 

 Jerking upright, adrenaline drove him beyond the otherwise incapacitating pain and across the bed. He scrambled for where he usually kept his crossbow propped against the wall. His head snapped up when he found it absent, found the wolf, the _man_ still reclined in the chair, still as stone. He was silhouetted against the dying red sun and so Stiles could gauge nothing by his expression, he didn’t have time to guess, he couldn’t risk it.

 

 His eyes flicked to the side where his tools lay, an array of potential weapons. He lunged, only to cry out in shocked agony as his ankle twisted under him, limp and unable to take his weight. His body jerked like it was pierced with a jolt of electricity and slammed into a wall of solid muscle instead of the floor. He flew backward, snarling, clawing with blunt human nails, kicking away from the werewolf with everything he had even as the pain in his leg sang until his eyes streamed.

 

 The werewolf growled warningly, pinning him hard to the bed, one forearm braced across his chest, just high enough to worry Stiles’s throat, not high enough to damage it. Stiles’s legs were pinned by the weight of muscle above him, heavy as stone even though he was far from the scrawny teenager that hadn’t even been able to get off the bench in lacrosse. The werewolf growled another dark warning, free hand reaching out to grab for his assailing arms.

 

 “Stop!” The wolf snarled, pressing more firmly on his chest with his forearm, their faces scant inches apart. “You’re wounded. Lay still!” Of all that strength above him, it was the sound of the wolf, the man’s voice that threw Stiles into stillness. He froze at the shock of the sound on the air, overwhelmed by the sound of another voice besides his own after all this time. Like a fish out of water he stared up at the creature wearing a human face, mouth gaping a little, chest heaving with breathless, besieged astonishment.

 

 After so long alone, it was as relieving yet terrifying as seeing sunlight after years of darkness. His head was spinning the longer he lay there, perhaps remnants of his hard collision to the tree or…

 

 Holy fuck there was someone else here with him. For just a brief moment, the possibility of dying, the instinct to distrust this creature, it all fell away at the sheer relief of not being alone. Just for a moment. He lay still, his breath evening out and the pain swelling up again steadily as the adrenaline faded. His leg filled with pulsing hot pain, his entire body ached and lines of fire burned across his chest, just below the wolf’s arm.

 

 The mountain lion, right.

 

 But as he lay there still, he realised he could see the wolf man’s face clearly now. He looked so…human. He had defined cheekbones and a beard, hair as unkempt as his own but jet black, piercing eyes that could have been green but looked almost amber with the red light glaring in through the window. Another pair of human looking eyes were staring down at him, thick brows furrowed in what he thought might be concern. Nothing made sense. He felt like he was falling but he was lying right there.

 

 He didn’t even realise he was shaking until the wolf man jerked his head up, apparently lost for what to do.

 

 “Hey, you’re...are you ok?”

 

 Stiles grit his teeth, if only to stifle the sound of distressed shock swelling like bile in his throat. “ _Werewolf_ ,” he growled like an accusation.

 

 The already scowling expression furrowed into tight, restrained fury. His nostrils flared and his lips thinned. “Species doesn’t matter at the end of the world,” the werewolf sneered, his voice softer than Stiles thought, even when insulted. He’d forgotten what words sounded like besides his own. His mind felt giddy in a way that had nothing to do with the impact with the tree and ground earlier, yet the years-instilled suspicion, the survival instinct was still most prominent. He hadn’t survived this long by dropping his guard so easily. And besides, species did matter when everything was their fault. Werewolves did this, tore his world to shreds.

 

 Stiles felt every bottled up fear, every heartbroken moment of loss, loneliness, hatred, blame, everything he’d kept together and held back for fear that if he unleashed it upon himself he would break entirely – it all spilled out. Overflowed like an eruption of magma and he writhed like a beast both electrified and possessed.

 

“Get _off_ me!” The scream tore at his throat. He was shaking in earnest, slamming his fists, the flat of his palms into the werewolf’s shoulders, cracking across his jaw over and over until his fingers throbbed.

 

 “Stop!” The werewolf demanded, capturing his wrists and shaking him when he continued to struggle, despite the stretch of searing pain across his chest from the now weeping wounds. “ _Stop_!” That last was a rumbling, vibrating alpha command, unmistakeable even to someone like Stiles who had only encountered them a few times.

 

Despair choked him but only served to make him struggle harder, adrenaline, making him immune to pain.

 

 “Don’t fight me!” The wolf snapped.

 

 “Let go of me,” Stiles spat in return, pulling with all his strength on the vice-like grip on his wrists that felt bruising with their unyielding strength now.

 

 The werewolf shook him once more, then when Stiles still did not relent, he pressed right into his personal space, face perilously close, enough to tear Stiles’s face to shreds with his teeth. He roared. Red eyes flashed, fangs bared and Stiles’s entire body locked up, his human instincts reacting as they should to the debilitating weapon of an apex predator.

 

 “Don’t fight me!” The werewolf snarled again, breathless, body shaking with it. “If I’d wanted to kill you I’d have killed you at the lake, or left you to the lion, not wasted all my energy hauling you up a ladder while trying not to aggravate your wounds further. Or treating your wounds for that matter.”

 

 Stiles swallowed, unable to stop his gaze from drifting over the werewolf’s mouth. Words. So many words, human words twisting easily around retreating fangs. He just barely choked back a hysterical laugh.

 

 Slowly, so painfully slowly, as if he were afraid any sudden movement would spook Stiles, as if Stiles were the animal, the werewolf retreated back to the chair. This time though, he remained leaning forward slightly, watching him with elbows resting on his thighs.

 

 Even though his entire body protested, felt like ground meat, Stiles forced himself into an upright position, clasping his wounded chest, which he only then realised was bare except for bandages. His bandages from his First Aid Kit. He wanted to ask who this werewolf was, where he’d come from, why he’d saved Stiles, where he’d learned to bandage human wounds but the silence that filled his lungs was all consuming.

 

 “You should let me look at the claw marks,” the wolf said, tone unreadable. “You might’ve torn them open. I can smell the blood.”

 

 Stiles’s mind was spinning and not entirely from his collision with the floor earlier. He wrung his hands together to try and stop them from shaking, moistening his dry lips. He couldn’t help the way his eyes darted from the man in the chair and the potential weapons on his tool shelf, even with the clear display of unthreatening stillness, the unavoidable truth in his words.

 

 Tentatively, Stiles dragged his fingers lightly over the bandages wrapped around his torso. Yes, they were damp, he could see the stains bleeding through a little. Then the pain bloomed as vibrantly as the blood. He felt it. The pain in his chest burned the hottest, like acid across his flesh but the rest of him was one prominent ache. He hissed, levering himself up on the rickety bed post into an unsteady standing position, one that was limited by pain but made him feel a little more secure nonetheless. Up was mobile, mobile was safe.

 

 He kept his face determinedly averted from the wolf, focussed on the shelf of well-worn books as he struggled to compose himself. Any show of weakness was a death sentence, surely?

 

 “How did you find me?” he asked, voice low, wary. He braced himself against the wall even though nausea crawled up his throat at the pain swelling higher and higher.

 

 The wolf kept still, hands folded between his knees but his watchful silence only served to give him the appearance of a predator in waiting. He seemed aware of everything. He watched the way Stiles braced himself on the shelf, put his back flat against the wall, watched the way his fingers twitched as if searching for something to defend himself. He saw every tell Stiles had, smelled a few others he didn’t know he had, probably. If Stiles hadn’t seen for himself that there were worse things out there, he wouldn’t have had a clue how a creature like that could be wiped out alongside humanity.

 

 “I’ve been looking for my younger sister,” the wolf said in that same, inflectionless soft voice. Was that just part of the danger? That something so powerful could lure him in with a soft voice? Like the petals of a flower that would snap shut around you the moment you got close? After all this time the bloom was tempting, but he wasn’t going to be caught. Or was he just…? He was so confused.

 

 Still, the wolf’s answer was unexpected and made Stiles stare at him agape for a moment. “Your…sister?” His own voice was hoarse from his screams and he wondered if the way the wolf canted his head to the side was because of that or something else.

 

 “We do have sisters, you know,” the wolf returned, deadpan. “And brothers, parents, _grandparents,_ even. Or we did, at least.” The last was delivered with the same dryness, but Stiles swore he saw something behind the blank expression. The sun had set now, the world outside filled with that pinkish pre-dusk violet. How long had he been passed out? All day? With this wolf watching him and tending his wounds? He shook his head, unable to reconcile himself to the image.

 

 “You didn’t answer me. How did you find me?” he demanded tersely.

 

 “Would you just sit down before you fall down?” the wolf snapped and when Stiles didn’t comply, he rose to his feet.

 

 Stiles jerked, already scrambling for something, anything but before his hands could close around anything useful, the wolf’s strong, unyielding fingers locked around his forearm, pressing the handle of the sheers Stiles used for the makeshift greenhouse below, into Stiles’s free hand.

 

 Stiles’s brow furrowed. The wolf said nothing, just jerked Stiles to sit on the edge of the bed again. At the sharp motion, Stiles raised the sheers to the wolf’s throat. Green eyes blazed, bearded chin lifted in defiance, as if daring him to press the edges into flesh. Stiles swallowed, heart hammering, but as the moments stretched out and he still didn’t move, as the _wolf_ still didn’t move to hurt him, he realised that initial explosion of hurt had faded almost out of existence.

 

 There had been humans who were as bad as the monsters that had exterminated them all. Surely that meant there had been werewolves who were good? Surely it was possible this man was every bit as human as him? He just didn’t…

 

 Eyes wide, Stiles glanced down to where strong fingers were wrapped around his forearm. He watched with stunned confusion as black tendrils crept along his skin and up the wolf’s muscled arm, disappearing below the sleeve of his worn t-shirt.

 

 “Wha-what are you doing?” Stiles demanded, voice fast with panic, even though the pain…the pain was being swallowed up by the wolf’s touch. His eyes darted up to see a faint grimace on the beast’s face. “How are you doing that?”

 

 Green eyes flashed red and for a moment the grimace morphed into one of anguish and the wolf let go. He stepped back, staggering a little and shaking out his arm, dropping into the chair, hunched over, breathing laboured.

 

 Stiles tried in vain to moisten his dry lips. “Can…can all werewolves do that?”

 

 The wolf nodded as he gathered himself, pushing upright in the chair with his hands on his dirty jeans. Blood-splattered, Stiles noticed, wondering if that was his blood.

 

 “If we’re taught,” the wolf managed after a beat, “it doesn’t…doesn’t usually take that much out of me. But I…” He trailed off, though Stiles thought his appearance spoke for itself. He was worn down, tired, dirty, probably hungry.

 

 “There should be something in the fridge, if you eat vegetables at least,” Stiles said, gesturing to the fridge that he still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to keep going. The wolf glared at him and Stiles cleared his throat awkwardly. “Of course you eat vegetables. But…yeah, there’s enough wildlife here that you could probably hunt down a rabbit or I tend to fish? To be honest hunting is something I avoid, even now. Blood is something I’m not too good with, sort of puts me off my food. I don’t even really like fishing but I guess…” He trailed off when he realised he was rambling, so used to having to fill the silence all by himself.

 

 When the quiet stretched out between them, Stiles moved to push up from the bed again. The wolf moved so quickly that Stiles jerked in anticipation of attack, but he just made his way toward the fridge. He had to have been able to smell the vegetables but hadn’t taken any. He hadn’t looted the place or left Stiles for dead. Stiles’s eyes followed the wolf’s every move as he cut up some of the vegetables and berries.

 

 Now Stiles looked, he thought he was favouring his shoulder, as if he too were injured and he remembered the flash of black fur descending on the brown hide of the mountain lion. Remembered stabbing the wolf with the bolt. Stiles had fled from the black wolf but he had defended Stiles, taken injury and patched him up just…for what? Out of human kindness?

 

 Ever since the world had been thrown into chaos, he’d seen less and less acts of humanity, even the last humans he’d seen years ago had been ruined by greed and fear and spite. How ironic that the most human person he’d seen since he’d lost his dad was one of the things he’d blamed for everything.

 

 “Hey,” he called out, making the werewolf freeze in cutting up the cucumber. His head tilted, slowly turning to meet Stiles’s gaze but he did not speak. Stiles swallowed. He’d been out of contact with humanity for too long. He didn’t know how to read people anymore, didn’t remember how to talk without offending people or pissing them off. All he knew was this man wasn’t going to hurt him and that was the best offer of company, of human contact Stiles had had in eight years. Even if the man wasn’t human.

 

 “I don’t want to keep calling you werewolf in my head,” he said, unable to school his words. A dark brow lifted as if to say, ‘really?’

 

 Stiles sighed when the werewolf didn’t get the hint. “Your name, dude, what is it?”

 

 At first the werewolf just turned his attention back to the vegetables, separating them onto two plates (part of the sparse kitchenware left behind by whoever had abandoned this radio tower, years before Stiles had ever come here). He set them on the little side table and pushed it over to the bed so Stiles didn’t have to move and knelt beside it, by his own portion. He didn’t reply until Stiles had brought a piece of carved tomato to his lips.

 

 “Derek,” he said. “My name’s Derek Hale.”

 

 Stiles nodded as he chewed, remembering at the very least that talking with your mouth full was wrong, if nothing else. He felt as if he were stuck in a very peculiar dream. He wasn’t entirely sure how they’d gotten here, from that fight by the lake to sharing a meal. Wasn’t that some sort of centuries-old display of trust, of a truce?

 

 What choice did they have, if they were the last two people in the world?

 

 “You’re Mischief,” Derek said, before Stiles could finish his mouthful.

 

 Stiles blinked.

 

 “I was looking for supplies in a town probably…sixty miles from here. I heard your broadcast in the radio in my car.”

 

 Stiles froze. Never in all his time here had he actually expected someone to hear his last desperate attempt to connect with humanity. It’d just been a desire for someone that didn’t want to eat him to know he was alive, even though he’d known there wasn’t anyone listening. It’d all been a pipe dream and yet… His throat and chest felt unbearably tight. “You…heard it?”

 

 Derek nodded, giving Stiles an odd look before plucking up a piece of tomato and popping it into his mouth. There was a moment of very personal pleasure, Stiles thought, an intense appreciation that made Derek look almost euphoric. Stiles knew that feeling. After months of surviving on rationed canned foods and man-made sugar snacks, he thought he’d almost had a dry orgasm after he’d harvested the first batch of vegetables from the greenhouse.

 

 “How did you manage to grow so many varieties of vegetables all year round?” Derek asked, his tone betraying a little awe and appreciation which made Stiles duck his head, unable to decide how to handle either.

 

 “I dunno. Green fingers, I guess? My mom really loved her vegetable garden and I helped out. Plus I found a gardening book on my journey here. I always knew if I managed to settle somewhere I’d run out of the ol’ canned goods eventually. The lake and the seclusion here kept me safe for a while and I just…” He shrugged. “I was tired of running. So I made some runs to the nearest town, probably that one you visited, actually, since I think that’s the nearest. And my Jeep died on the last run but I managed to get all the supplies here to build the greenhouse and set this place up as best I could.”

 

 Though Derek was obviously listening intently, nodding to show as much, he was chewing every bite with relish and he didn’t speak again until his plate was clear. It’d been a plate full of chopped vegetables, not even cooked but it seemed like it was the best meal he’d had in a long time.

 

  “Where did you leave your car?” Stiles asked.

 

 “About twenty miles back, the trees grew too close together to get through safely,” Derek replied, with a tinge of relief as if he _wanted_ to talk, relished in the conversation almost as much as Stiles did, but didn’t know where to begin. He hadn’t been a particularly loquacious man even before the world ended, Stiles thought. He wondered if he would’ve driven Derek mad had they met before.

 

 “So…I guess you heard my broadcast and then…used your nose to find me?” Stiles ventured.

 

 Derek snorted. “I went as deep as I could with the car, then I just walked. I figured if you were set up you’d need fresh water. I followed the streams, eventually came across your scent.”

 

 Remembering the bolt again, Stiles winced. “I…I’m sorry about the whole stabbing thing. I panicked. But, dude, you really should’ve like…shifted back or something. I thought you were some rabid animal.”

 

 Derek cocked his head slightly. “You knew I was a werewolf.”

 

 Stiles’s spine prickled. “Well…yeah, I’ve seen werewolves before, on the news, and on the road. Not for years though.” When Derek continued to stare at him, face unreadable, Stiles huffed. “Look. Can you blame me for acting first and asking questions later? I didn’t get this far by believing the best of people, that part of me died a long time ago.” Along with his dad, his one constant protector who always put him first and cleaned up after his messes when he trusted the wrong people. Now he couldn’t afford to make mistakes.

 

 “Last time I met a supernatural…” Stiles gestured to the scars on the left side of his face.

 

 Derek’s eyes scanned the marks. “What was it?”

 

 “I don’t know. Its face was made of bone.”

 

 Derek was silent for a long time, before rising deliberately slowly and moving over to the sink. There was no running water but there was a jug of water there and the drain still worked. He cleaned the plates off and then covered them with the cloth, all in silence before he braced himself against the worktop, hanging his head slightly, just looking tired of everything, wearier than Stiles himself felt with the world.

 

 “Not all wolves were with the alpha pack, you know,” Derek murmured. “My family fought against them.”

 

 Stiles didn’t know what to say to that. It’d been too long, _so long_ since he’d had to think before he spoke. He felt adrift, cast out on a stormy ocean he couldn’t navigate.

 

 “I hadn’t come across a sentient being in months and then when I heard your voice…” Derek turned to face him carefully. “I don’t even know why I tried the radio. I just…I do it sometimes. Just get in the car, poke the auto-tune. It’s like a ritual, I guess. A pointless one but…”

 “No, I get it,” Stiles murmured almost absently, because hadn’t the radio been exactly the same for him? Just a pointless act? Part of his routine that gave him some flash of hope in the field of loneliness?

 

 Derek cocked his head slightly. “Your name isn’t really Mischief, is it?”

 

 Stiles laughed, the sound a little hollow when he realised that, even when there had been a world of people, only one man had known his real name. It seemed important somehow that someone else knew, especially if Derek was potentially the only other person he’d ever see. “No. It’s Mieczyslaw.” He couldn’t help but laugh at the expression on Derek’s face. He hadn’t laughed in…

 

 “It’s a family name. My mom’s father. Dad really looked up to him.”

 

 Derek shifted uncomfortably. “I…I’m sorry,” he offered awkwardly.

 

 “For what?”

 

 “You…the way you said… They died, right?”

 

 Stiles swallowed, or tried to, at least, because his throat was too dry and thick and tight all at once. He couldn’t say it aloud.

 

 “I lost my family in the riots. One of the last ones,” Derek offered with all the willingness of a man walking the gallows. “Our house was burned down. I escaped and…” His face twisted in a grimace. “My sister Cora wasn't at the house. She might be alive somewhere.”

 

 He had to hope she was, Stiles thought. That hope kept him going.

 

 “Only my parents could say my name,” Stiles said wistfully, knowing that they were both on the same wavelength right then, wanting to share what they could for fear this would be the last conversation they had with another sapient being, not remembering quite how to talk to people, wanting to share and yet not wanting to at the same time. Neither of them wanted to let the memories in.

 

 He kept his tone as light as he could as he continued, “even I couldn’t say it for the first like…six years of my life. The closest I could get was _Mischief_ so that’s what my mom used to call me before she died. But my dad and everyone else just called me Stiles.”

 

 Derek straightened, eyes wide and searching him, as if suddenly he was seeing Stiles in a new light. He stepped forward, slow as if stupefied and Stiles couldn’t help but feel uneasy under his scrutiny. This is what he got for letting his guard down after all these years. His starvation of human contact, of conversation had let him down in a pivotal moment, made him trust this guy and now he was going to get his throat ripped out and…

 

 “Stiles…Stilinski?”

 

 Stiles jerked as if shot and his chest, his aching body, although mostly drained of pain, gave a warning throb. “What…how do you–?”

 

 “Because I know your dad.” Derek frowned, stopping then, staring down at Stiles in hurt confusion. “Knew, I guess…you…you said he died?” Even as he spoke though, he looked confused, as if that didn’t make sense.

 

 “Yeah, he…we were heading up to a settlement in the _Orelia Lake District_ up north eight years ago when we were attacked.”

 

 Derek’s mouth parted slightly, as if he were on the verge of speech but was too stunned to find the words. “I saw him. Just…no more than six months ago. He’s alive. Or…he was when I left.”

 

 Stiles had always thought it was one of those cheesy, unrealistic movie moments when someone fainted from shock, but he felt light-headed, starved of oxygen and was sure he was heading that way. His chest was so tight he couldn’t breathe. He gripped the blanket beneath him with weak, numb fingers and lurched forward despite knowing that it wouldn’t help his wounded chest. His head hung limply and he stared, unseeing at the floor. Swirling, dark and light spots spiralled before his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t.

 

 “Stiles?” Derek asked, loud yet distant all at once. Who…who the fuck was this guy? Storming into his lonely little slow death and dropping that impossible hope on him? That unlikely dream? Because there was no way, just no way…

 

 “What’s his name?” Stiles demanded, voice low but rough and through his clenched teeth. How dare he? Throwing such fucking blatant lies around like they didn’t even matter.

 

 “Ah…I don’t know his first name. Everyone just calls him Sher–”

 

 “Sheriff,” Stiles repeated, voice almost lost on his tongue. Sheriff Stilinski. Fuck…fuck… _fuck!_

“He runs the settlement up at _Orelia Lake_ with Melissa McCall and Chris Argent. That’s…that’s where I’m from, where I’ve been. But our scouting party came across two survivors and they mentioned seeing my younger sister so I left to look for her. But it’s…he’s alive, Stiles. Sheriff Stilinski was alive when I saw him six months ago.”

 Stiles glared at him then, drawing in a sharp breath at last as fury pulsed through him. “Liar!” He snarled. “You…you’re lying! I saw burned bodies when I came to, so many bodies. I found his badge. He’s dead! He’s _dead_! Everyone is dead!” Stiles’s voice broke as a rough, hurt sob he felt down to his bones tore out of him. He blinked back the tears and stared right at Derek, daring him to lie again.

 

 Derek didn’t speak, didn’t move for a long time. When he did, it was to pick up the box of matches on the bedside table and light the two candles in the room. There had been no lamps when Stiles had arrived and he hadn’t managed to find any with bulbs, candles had been his only option. Stiles wanted to protest. He had a good supply. They seemed to burn ridiculously, unrealistically slow but he didn’t want to run out. The working part of his brain that he required to say as much though seemed locked away somewhere behind the silent, angry, heartbroken tears. He wanted his dad, he wanted his _dad_ …

 

 Lowering himself onto the chair once more, Derek held Stiles’s gaze unwaveringly. “I spent most of my time in the medical hall with Melissa McCall,” he said, his soft voice gentle on the sharp silence and Stiles’s raging heartache. “My abilities are useful to the sick or injured. But everyone in the settlement knows him. I know some things. I know…he talks about you all the time. Whenever we have beef or pork from the livestock he says you would’ve ripped him a new one for eating it.”

 

 Stiles could feel the tears streaming down his cheeks, feel his sinuses clog up and his eyes sting but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. Everything was different. The world he knew was gone for the second time in his life.

 

 It’d been a long time since he’d started thinking he was probably one of the last humans on earth, that out there the only sentient beings were those that would devour him whole. He wasn’t sure why he’d continued with the radio broadcasts, continued to talk into nothingness. The only explanation was that there was a spark of hope in him that he wasn’t alone. The lonely safety Stiles had built around the old radio tower in the middle of nowhere had been broken. For just one horrifying moment, Stiles wasn’t sure if Derek was a harbinger of chaos or hope at the end of the world.

 

 “He’s…alive?” Stiles whispered, so quiet, so broken, not daring to hope, because he knew if the hope was quashed he would break into pieces and never be able to recover again. “You spoke to him? He’s alive?”

 

 Just that morning he’d thought he was about to die, ripped to shreds by a werewolf, then that werewolf turned out to be this man, this person, after years of solitude. Now this person was saying his dad… No. He shook his head. “He’s not. He can’t be.” Not after all this time, when Stiles had thought he was alone.

 

 “Even if you don’t believe me, you can’t stay here,” Derek told him. “It’s not safe. There’s…activity in the area and if I can find you, there are things a lot worse than me that can too.”

 

 Stiles dragged his hand through his hair, across the back of his neck, not knowing what to do, how to cope, how to process.

 

 “You…who the fuck are you?” Stiles demanded shakily, “Jesus. You crash in here and I don’t know who you are, if you’re telling me the truth, now you want me to leave here? Do you even know how hard it was to get this far? To make somewhere I could stay without–?”

 

 “You don’t know me,” Derek agreed, “but if I am lying, then it’s stable here, there’s food, water and wildlife. If I were lying, it’d make sense to stay.” Derek seemed to consider Stiles for a beat then, perhaps seeing something he felt connection with because all of a sudden Derek’s face looked reluctantly, unbelievably soft in the candlelight, in the little light that still remained in the dusk outside. “But I’m not lying, Stiles, he’s alive.”

 

 Stiles didn’t move for shock and to his credit, Derek, who didn’t know him at all sat right there watching him, allowing him his silence.

 

 He didn’t remember much of the hours that followed, it was like he was overcome by catatonia. Time had no meaning and everything around him went fuzzy and unfocussed, far away. All he knew was that he came back to himself, or perhaps awoke in the morning flat on his bed, a blanket over him. Derek was asleep, slumped uncomfortably upright against the side of the bed on the floor. Stiles’s arm was hanging off the edge and he wondered if Derek had taken his pain while he slept because he didn’t hurt as much as he should. He frowned, unsure if he was uncomfortable with that, unsure what the boundaries were, what was right.

 

 He didn’t move for a long while, just staring out the window as the early morning light crept up beyond the trees below the tower. It filled the room with an ethereal grey hue as he contemplated the night before, the last few years, the day he’d lost his dad. He wondered if in a moment he’d wake and this had all been a dream, that Derek wasn’t real at all, because it all just seemed a little too good to be true. He didn’t dare move lest he shatter it.

 

 His dad was alive. His dad was alive out there, running a settlement of people, other _people_ and Derek, he was a werewolf and he’d shattered every preconception Stiles had ever had and cared for him when he was at his most vulnerable. It had been a useful impulse to distrust everything and everyone but, as he tilted his head slowly to the side and saw Derek’s disgruntled, clearly uncomfortable yet exhausted outline, he thought he hadn’t been left with much choice.

 

 Laying like this, he could see the other window over the table where one of the candles Derek had lit last night stood. He watched as an owl swooped passed outside, probably searching for her last catch before the dawn broke and urged her into slumber. Stiles knew what monsters lurked beyond the trees. He wasn’t the naïve kid who’d watched the world end on the television thinking it’d never touch him. He wasn’t a fool. He’d escaped monstrous humans and he’d fled nightmarish beasts, the man beside his bed was not one of them.

 

 The candles burned down completely before Derek woke, used up more in one night than they ever did when Stiles lit one. He wondered if Derek had lit them wrong.

 

* * *

 

_A/N: I'm planning to post roughly once every two weeks. Also I have a[Tumblr ](http://hyperlittlenori.tumblr.com/)if you want to say hi or whatnot. I hope the first chapter was up to scratch :)_


	2. No Sound But The Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it becomes clear that something dark is drawing closer, changing the very forest around them, Stiles and Derek struggle to trust and learn to work with someone else after so long.

Chapter Two

**No Sound But The Wind**

When Stiles watched Derek wake it was with a jerk and visible ripple of tension through him, the sort of reflex of a man who hadn’t felt safe for a long time. Stiles knew the feeling. He eased up onto his elbow, the movement punctuated with a frisson of pain through his entire being. He was pretty sure he was black and blue all over, except for the gashes across his chest, the pain not eased any by Derek’s assurances that they weren’t too deep.

 

 At Stiles’s movement and grimace of pain, Derek seemed to register his presence and come to himself fully, with a look of surprise that he’d managed to fall asleep so easily. He pushed back a little from the bed to put a little distance between them and kept his eyes on him. It didn’t appear to be in a manner that advertised that he felt threatened, more of an instinct. Stiles understood that too.

 

 “Hey, I’m sorry I stabbed you yesterday,” Stiles blurted out, throat rough still with sleep despite having been awake for a while, brain busy.

 

 Derek stared at him a moment before dipping his head with a little wry smirk.

 

 “Already healed,” he said in a tone of acceptance.

Thankfully Stiles’s ankle wasn’t broken, but it was badly twisted and when he tentatively rose from bed, wary of the renewed sharp stripes of pain across his chest, his ankle looked swollen and bruised. Derek seemed poised to protest, but watched him silently as Stiles dragged on a fresh shirt and hobbled, wincing, down the ladder. It was slow work, descending without causing himself even more damage, and it put a lot of pressure on his arms and other foot.

 

 Stiles touched ground with a muffled grunt of pain and momentarily froze, grip tightening on the ladder. There was a fleeting second where he struggled for composure, only a beat, but it was followed by a thump behind him. Stiles tried not to jump to see Derek right behind him, rising gracefully from the ground as if he hadn’t just dropped around forty feet. He’d come across a few werewolves in his time but only in passing, had managed to steer clear of any interaction with them. Such a display of power was new and unnerving, especially from someone as quiet and casual as Derek seemed to be.

 

 “I’m alright,” Stiles said, pushing away from the ladder and managing to lean as much weight as possible onto his better foot. “Just a long way down.”

 

 But Derek merely surveyed him with furrowed brows, expression unreadable. He seemed torn between arguing with Stiles’s insistence that he tend to the greenhouse and something else. In the end, he settled for following Stiles’s awkward hobbling steps like a dark, silent shadow the few feet from the base of the ladder to the little greenhouse. It stood off to the side, out of range of the nearest trees so it was well in the clearing, separated from the base of the tower by the basic shelter Stiles used for storage, to sit at when cooking or working on the fishing nets.

 

 He was pretty sure the way he stored a lot of things, particularly tools with smells that may draw animals in, were big ‘no’s’ in some survival guide out there. He just hoped whatever luck seemed to have gotten him this far would hold out until he found his dad.

 

 When Stiles stumbled a little on the lip of wood along the threshold of the greenhouse, Derek reached out with lightning reflexes and caught him, strong fingers gripping Stiles’s bicep firmly. There was a little jolt of awareness at the touch and Stiles, who had already halted at the way his stomach lurched upward in anticipation of a fall, just stared at Derek mutely for a long moment.

 

 Derek’s eyes were a complicated green, especially vibrant with the forest as his backdrop and it took Stiles’s brain a few tries to move on from that single thought. When Derek released him, it was with a slow unfurling of his fingers, as if he too was having difficulty taking command of his limbs. He didn’t follow Stiles into the greenhouse as Stiles had thought he might though, seemed hesitant to touch even the doorway of the structure much less the plants within.

 

 “I know it looks…rustic but it’s been here for years now, it’s not going to fall down,” Stiles said, a little irritated. “Plus I was pretty handy in Shop class.”

 

 Derek just looked at him watering the nearest tomato plant before looking down at the spare water containers. He snatched them up and headed out of sight without a clearer response.

 

 Stiles paused and he knew a beat of panic. After years of learning not to turn his back on anyone, a part of him still felt uneasy knowing, _feeling_ there was someone nearby yet not being able to see them. It didn’t help that Derek hadn’t spoken much since the night before, just seemed to be naturally quiet. That silence only made Stiles wonder more, feel more reluctant to turn his back to the door, to this stranger. However, something in Stiles’s belly, that familiar humming under his skin told him to trust the wolf, the man who’d saved him yesterday.

 

 “You’re so messed up,” he muttered in self-deprecation, talking to himself something of a habit. He winced as he made his way haltingly around the greenhouse, a light sheen of sweat forming on his brow.

 

 The subtle vibration beneath his skin never quite faded entirely, he assumed because Derek hadn’t gone far – the lake was evidently just close enough to trigger his ‘spidey sense’. The feeling swelled again steadily not long after, until it was like an itchy little prickle up the back of his neck and Stiles glanced to the side just in time to spy Derek through the open door, setting the full containers down outside in the shelter for easy acces. Again, he did not come inside.

 

 Stiles sighed. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. All he’d known was that waking up to find he wasn’t alone was both the biggest relief and the most terrifying realisation. Every time he caught Derek’s shape with his peripheral vision, it was like he’d missed a rung descending the ladder. The world had been simple before his arrival, lonely but simple. Now he didn’t know which way was up and which was down.

 

 With his busted ankle, the rounds of the plants took more out of him than usual and his entire body was _throbbing_ by the time he hobbled out into the fresh air and shut the greenhouse behind him, securing it against the wildlife. He ambled over to the crudely constructed fire pit and flopped clumsily down beside it.

 

 There was no oven up in the radio tower, only a little gas hob and no gas to fuel it, so this was where he prepared any of his cooked meals. A rudimentary little stone circle like his dad had taught him for building a fire safely when camping, topped with a little overhang to keep the rain off when the weather was poor. He had become a dab hand at lightning a fire with the bow drill method (with a shoelace from one of his retired boots as the string) but for a moment he just sat, breathing hard and dragging a hand across the sweat-dampened back of his neck. He’d overdone it, taxed his already pained body. He felt worse now than when he’d awoken, limbs shaky.

 

 Movement beside him made him jerk his head up to the detriment of his already pounding head and neck. The pain travelled all the way down his spine and he hissed, diverting his gaze as Derek stood over him.

 

 “Hey, don’t hover, dude, I’m just more shook up from yesterday than I thought,” he offered, “I’ve had worse, I’m good.” He reached forward, careful of his stinging chest but he felt shaky and weak, hot in spite of the breeze and he set his jaw as he determinedly reached for the fireboard.

 

 A hand grasping his wrist stilled him and he tensed for a beat, not moving, body rigid with the still alien sensation of touch. Derek’s face always seemed possessed of that same intense expression, the one that suggested a storm was raging behind his eyes. He held onto Stiles just a moment longer than necessary, his fingers flexing slightly before releasing him.

 

 “You need to take it down a gear,” Derek said, “You smell…sickly.”  


 Stiles was indignant at that. “I bet I’ve probably had a bath more recently than you, buddy, albeit a cold one. There’s no way I’m making it to the stream on this ankle today. Maybe tomorrow.” He knew a moment of uncertainty, wondering if he should be let Derek see the severity of his vulnerability. The way that those eyes followed his every move didn’t do much to help. The conflicted voices within argued for and against the desire to trust Derek, all while Stiles cooked the vegetable soup that would be their breakfast and lunch.

 

 He silently cursed his shaking hands.

 

 “You’re very self-sufficient,” Derek stated as they rinsed out the bowls with some of the fresh water.

 

 Stiles blinked up at him, pouring the rest of the soup into one of the storage containers he kept for food. “Yeah, I guess I’m resourceful if nothing else. I’d been collecting things on my journey pretty much, hoping I could find somewhere to set up that was safe. Anything and everything I could lay my hands on.”

 

 “You’ve built a home here, that takes strength.” It was said with the same, inflectionless tone yet Stiles knew a moment of praise nonetheless. He’d missed this, he had, more than words, just conversation and companionship and the comfort of knowing he wasn’t alone.

 

 “It’s a safe place at the end of the world,” Stiles offered, scratching awkwardly at his cheek, “but it’s not really home, you know?” The odd look in Derek’s eyes was unreadable and just in case it was pity, Stiles added, “It’s the only place I’ve ever been able to settle though, so…it’s as close to comfort as you can get I suppose.”

 

 “It’ll be hard to leave.” It was a statement, not a question and for a second Stiles just frowned, then bristled.

 

 “Hey, you’re not just talking about taking me on a little road trip,” he said uneasily. “You’re talking about me placing my life in your hands. Let’s award this situation with the gravity it deserves.”

 

 “You still think I’m lying?” Derek’s eyes narrowed and his back straightened. “Because I’m a werewolf?”

 

 “So I’m species-ist or something?” Stiles demanded, unimpressed. “Dude, the fact that your species is what started this whole mess has nothing to do with it.” For some reason that proclamation only seemed to infuriate Derek further. Stiles had forgotten he had a talent for that. When he spoke again his words were born from a growl of irritation at his inability to express himself properly with so little practice. “ _Look_ , it’s more of the fact that you’re a living breathing person, alright? You have no idea what it’s been like all this time. You just _crash_ in and you’re there and you’re telling me that there are people out there, that my _dad_ is out there and I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be honest. It sounds pretty unreal to me.”

 

 Derek seemed to take in only the ‘unreal’ part of his rambling. “So you’re not even going to try? You don’t want to see your father?”

 

 “Hey,” Stiles snapped warningly. “Don’t you dare.”

 

 “I get it,” Derek growled. “You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you but I thought you realised last night that there’s no reason for me to lie about this. And if I’d wanted you dead, you would’ve been by now.”

 

 “I never said I thought you were lying!” Stiles snapped, then dragged a weary, shaky hand over his face. He really felt like shit. “I want to trust you, I do. But it’s not that easy. It’s been a long time and I’m not…one hundred percent.” He lifted his head slowly, casting only a surreptitious glance to Derek out of the corner of his eye before casting his gaze out across the small clearing that had housed his makeshift home for so long.

 

 In a low, rough voice he added, “I haven’t left this forest for a long time.” There was loneliness in that truth, but safety too.

 

 After a silence that stretched out for longer than was comfortable, Derek nodded, brows pulled together a little in the middle in thought. “Have you got any medication?”

 

 When Stiles only frowned in answer at the randomness of those words, Derek sighed, obviously impatient. He had pretty poor social skills, even to Stiles’s low standards.

 

 “Drugs,” Derek clarified, “do you have drugs?”

 

 “To like…get high?” Stiles asked, confused.

 

 With a glare, Derek lifted his chin in annoyance. “To treat you,” he clarified, “the sickly smell, it usually means the beginnings of an infection.”

 

 It was so wholly unexpected that Stiles just blinked at him for a beat, while his brain registered Derek’s words. He swallowed, looking down at the fire that Derek had put out safely. Thin tendrils of leftover smoke still rose from the ashes. He’d not had more than a cold since being on his own but he’d always been conscious that if ever something more serious happened, he would be in trouble. He did have a stash upstairs of ‘emergency’ medication but…

 

 “A lot of it is out of date,” he said, on autopilot, still a little stunned.

 

 Derek nodded and rose, making Stiles start, pushing up from his crude seat of part of a felled tree in a way that made his chest pulse with pain. His bruised body shuddered warningly.

 

 “Hey,” Derek said, stilling him when he made to push up to his feet. “You need to take it easy.”

 

 “That’s good and all, I appreciate it but I can’t just rely on you. We barely know each other. That kind of thing is what gets you killed.”

 

 Another glare tightened Derek’s features and his nostrils flared like those of an enraged bull. “An untended infection is what gets people killed. You’ve fed me twice now; the least I can do is make sure you don’t drop down dead from a mountain lion’s scratch. The infection has only just started to set in, you need to get it before it gets worse.”

 

 Stiles could see how useful Derek’s abilities would be in a healthcare setting, especially with the world being what it was. He knew from the book on Basic First Aid that he’d scavenged early on, that it typically took three to twenty-one days for infection to incubate, although it could easily set in after one day with a low immune system. Maybe somehow Derek could tell what kind of infection his body would or wouldn’t be able to handle on its own?

 

 He felt the soreness from the impact with the tree, the almost overwhelming pain in his head and neck more than anything else. It wasn’t until he told Derek where the medicine was kept and watched him vanish toward the tower that he looked down at his hands and realised they were still shaking.

 

 “Stop it,” he whispered, shaking them out and awkwardly pulling a water container toward him to take a drink. He didn’t think his symptoms were those of an infection, it was too early for that most likely, but an infection could only make things worse.

 

 An odd sort of silence fell as Derek lowered himself to his knees at Stiles’s feet and sorted through the first aid kit he’d brought down with him. It wasn’t the kind of lonely, echoing nothing that Stiles had endured for years, but a companionable quiet. A comforting peace that didn’t require words for them to understand each other. The nervous energy, the frantic attempt to disguise the silence in his life that consumed Stiles most days settled back, watching on like a confused animal. Stiles was floored by it. He couldn’t take his eyes off Derek as he worked.

 

 After downing the first antibiotic from a pack Derek had sniffed and deemed ok, Stiles shrugged off his worn red hoody and pulled up his t-shirt enough for Derek to lean in. His heavy brows were drawn tight with concentration now instead of a frown and it made all the difference. His face was almost soft, even though his eyes were sharp with concentration, his large hands so gentle that as soon as they ran along the outside of the gashes in assessment, Stiles’s torso tightened on reflex.

 

 Green eyes flicked up to him. “Did I hurt you?”

 

 Stiles shook his head, not trusting his words. His chest had given a little jolt, that was all. He moistened his dry lips and nodded for Derek to continue, wanting this over with before he said something stupid.

 

 Derek laid his palm ever so gently over the wound, a feather-light touch and Stiles knew a moment of sharp pain, gave a hiss and a grimace before the pain pulsed slowly away. The iodine stung like a motherfucker though and Stiles wasn’t proud of the noise that was ripped from him even through clenched teeth. He didn’t let Derek take any more of his pain though, however tempting it was. It was difficult enough letting Derek do this much for him, even though it was clear now that Derek was used to this, did it on a daily basis back at the settlement he was from. It was automatic for him, to not care about being hurt if it prevented someone else from hurting. To him it was like breathing.

 

 The world felt so perfectly calm when Derek leaned in closer, shifting at Stiles’s feet like it was nothing to kneel before someone like that, focussed on wrapping the fresh bandages around Stiles’s chest. “I’ll boil the bandages and treat them with some of the sterilising agents you have here so we can reuse them,” Derek said, mostly to himself, which was a beauty all of its own, to hear someone else’s absent ramblings.

 

 In a shocking turn of events, Stiles remained quiet, not wanting to break the moment, even when Derek sat back a little and he was able to pull his t-shirt down and his hoodie back on.

 

 Derek’s fingers skimmed searchingly through the first aid kit and snatched up some tubular bandage. Stiles hesitated for a beat before toeing off his shoe. His ankle was a nasty colour and seemed to hurt even more now he’d seen it properly. When Derek grasped his foot Stiles gasped, jerked at the contact, surprising himself.

 

 “Uhh…sorry, ticklish.” He’d forgotten. Jesus, how could you forget you were ticklish?

  
 Derek, to his credit, only nodded, carefully wiping his skin with the cleaning solution just in case and drying it before wrapping his ankle with the supportive wrappings.

 

 Stiles was inexplicably reminded of the times he’d crawled into his mother’s hospital bed, even when she was at her most fragile and the nurses had offered him only encouragement. It was the human contact, the comfort of it, inspired oxytocin or something like that, was more beneficial than any painkiller in some ways. For a moment he felt almost drunk with it, carried away on a rush of feel-good hormones after years of starvation.

 

 “Do mountain lions usually bother you around here?” Derek asked, his voice low and soft.

 

 “Not really. I’ve seen one probably a handful of times over the years. But they usually steer well clear of me. I think the sounds of the generator keep most things away.”

 

 Derek gave a small nod as he finished tightening the wrappings, then checked to make sure they weren’t too tight. “I don’t think it was a coincidence that it was there. I came across other animals on my way here, on the move like they were fleeing from something. I think something spooked them.”

 

 A haunting flash of a white skull in the dark and the piercing flames within its sockets bloomed with horror inside him. Stiles’s breath caught and Derek’s eyes held his for a moment, as if he knew exactly what troubled him. Derek tucked the supplies back in the first aid kit and then rose to his feet. Stiles watched him, momentarily paralysed as his mind reeled, lost in the rise and fall of the bone man in his mind, the marrow-deep fear that it had radiated.

 

 Absently, Stiles ducked his head a fraction to trace the scar across his face. He tried to swallow, throat dry.

 

 “Derek,” he called, voice just a little rough around the edges. Derek halted, one hand on a rung of the ladder and the first aid kit tucked under his other arm. “I’ll go with you,” Stiles added.

 

 Regarding Stiles for a long, suspended moment, Derek eventually nodded. “When you’re recovered,” he agreed, looking out at the trees as if the chattering birds and other less vocal wildlife were whispering conspiratorially about their fate. “It’s like something from a nightmare out there,” Derek murmured, voice almost inaudible to Stiles’s mortal ears. “You’ll need every bit of strength in your body.”

 

 Without tearing his eyes from Derek, Stiles brushed the pad of his thumb across the worn surface of his dad’s badge. Ever since he’d awoken to ashes, it had been a constant presence hooked securely through his belt, protected from sight by the overhang of his jacket. A talisman, he liked to think, one that kept him sane while his unexplainable, likely imagined _‘luck’_ had kept him alive.

 

 “Is my dad really alive?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. It was as if he just needed to hear it again to be sure. Derek nodded and Stiles echoed the gesture resolutely. “Then it’ll be worth it.”

 

*

 

 It was amazing how relieving companionable silence was in comparison to his own lonely rambling. Derek was largely a man of few words but, Stiles learned, dry humour. He also had probably the best manners yet the most stubborn nature to contrast them. For two nights he slept in the old worn chair that had probably once been comfortable when the original owner had sat in it, ignoring Stiles’s offer to take turns in the bed. Stiles had dug out his old sleeping bag for him in the end, though it seemed both of them were struggling to adjust to sleeping with someone else so close by.

 

 On the third day, Stiles insisted his ankle felt stronger and made for the door, declaring that he usually caught and ate fish for dinner, not vegetable medley three times a day. Derek actually stood in front of the door to stop him when Stiles ignored his initial protests that his body was still recovering, if not from the fall then the wounds on his chest.

 

 Stiles levelled a disbelieving glare at him. “Seriously? I appreciate the concern but you are way out of line, buddy.” When Derek still didn’t move, he stepped forward, immune to the scowl. “Listen, this is my territory you’re on. I didn’t last this long by playing Robin to someone else’s Batman, alright?”

 

 Derek raised his thick brows at him. “Well I didn’t save you so you could break your damn neck before you’ve even finished your course of antibiotics.”

 

 Really, the worry, the simple idea of there being someone who wanted to care for him was appreciated but he’d rarely done as he was told even before the world ended, he wasn’t about to start now. He’d been on his own too long to just accept another’s orders so easily. Besides, if there had been anything he’d learned from trying to work around the sheriff it was how to side-step a confrontation.

 

 When Derek seemed convinced Stiles was going to stay put and headed off alone to find something that wasn’t a berry, vegetable or fruit for dinner, Stiles gave him time to get a food distance away, before snatching up the supplies he needed. He was as quiet-footed as he could be with a slight limp but he was a lot more mobile than he had been the other day. There was still an ache to his limbs when he moved, a tightness across his healing chest but he could do this much at least. And he _would_.

 

 It wasn’t about fishing, it was about keeping his independency and not letting himself depend on anyone else to keep him going.

 

 There was a subtle incline down to the stream that was an easier trip to make than the lake he drew water from, or even further upstream where he fished from. He hadn’t hobbled beyond the clearing since Derek had appeared and had made do with washing brusquely in a bowl, unable to make it this far for a more thorough wash. He wasn’t sure what bothered him more, the total obliteration to his routine or the uncomfortable unclean feeling that had built over the last few days.

 

 It wasn’t that he was body shy or worried about Derek accompanying him down to the stream, it was more that he wanted to do it himself, prove it to himself and Derek. That and that rebellious spark in him was determined to defy Derek’s insistence that he stay put. Derek had only insisted he hadn’t recovered enough for fishing after all. This was as much of a declaration of independence as any other.

 

 He couldn’t rely on someone else, not if it meant getting comfortable, sharing the load, only to have to learn to do it all alone again.

 

 He couldn’t do that again.

 

 The water of the stream had a cool bite as he stripped off and stepped carefully into the water. It wasn’t freezing with the warmth of the waning summer, but still startlingly cold as evening drew in and it sent a jolt through his body. He shuddered, keeping the crossbow within reach as he stooped so the water covered him, careful not to rest too much pressure on his still healing ankle. It might’ve been alright to walk on, _just_ , but he wanted to be careful.

 

 The bank jutted out enough that he could lower himself down into the water and scrub himself hastily with the homespun herb-based paste that was his soap replacement. It was a crude recipe but enough that he didn’t miss deodorant too much either if he was diligent. Another blessing from the books he’d collected on his travels as his supplies had started to dwindle. If anyone from Beacon Hills could see him now, a regular walking survival guide, he thought they wouldn’t believe their eyes. He almost couldn’t believe it himself.

 

 It’d mostly been luck, really. He hadn’t done anything or used any particular skill aside from intuition and desperation, the knowledge that he couldn’t just keep going. When he’d struck gold in a little hobby farm just before the town of _Fort _Salvada__ , he’d known he’d have to find somewhere nearby to settle before his luck ran out. They’d had some seeds, tools, a little bookshelf library dedicated to self-sufficiency, even an overgrown herb and vegetable garden he’d taken clippings from. It’d probably saved his life yet he’d thought bleakly back then, that it still hadn’t helped the original homesteaders make it, when the wolves had descended. There had been enough evidence in the town that they had been a victim of the wolves and not something else.

 

 Stiles scrubbed himself a little harder at the memory of the carnage.

 

 Luck, that had been the only difference between him and them. He wasn’t smarter or faster or stronger, he didn’t have an army at his back or supernatural powers. It was all just luck.

 

 When his skin looked pink from scrubbing in spite of the chilly, softly flowing water, Stiles looked down at the wet bandages with a grimace. He’d forgotten them.

 

 Tentatively, he peeled at the edges where they were secured and unravelled them slowly. The muscles in his shoulders and back protested lightly at the stretching but it was a pain he could handle. Blood he still wasn’t too good with, even after all this time and he hesitated for a beat before setting the bandages aside and staring down at his chest.

 

 Four sharp lines of angry red lay across his flesh, thin but deep. Or they had been, at least. They still looked stark against his lightly sun-kissed skin but they were definitely closed. He held his breath as he prodded lightly along the edge of one of the claw marks. It ached, stung a little but they were no longer open wounds.

 

 Submerging himself in the stream made him catch his breath, inflicted a sharp prickle of cold. It was a relief all the same, a soothing numbness to his lingering soreness. He dragged his fingers through his hair and scalp, then stopped. Everything stopped. He pushed up, breaking the surface at the familiar jolt of awareness along the back of his neck. He lunged for the crossbow on the jut of the bank and swung to face the trees, only to relax at the sight of Derek’s raised brow.

 

 “Don’t you ever do as you’re told?” Derek asked, a large brown bird hanging from his arm – a sign of  a successful hunt.

 

 Stiles dropped the crossbow back to the bank and swept his wet hair from his face, rivulets of water trailing down his nose, lips and jaw. “Not since I remember,” he replied flippantly, dashing the water from his face. When his eyes and sinuses were fully clear of water from his panicked jerk up from the surface, he realised that Derek was still watching him, unmoving and flushed a little at the unexpected scrutiny. He hoped when he crouched down at the bank and finished washing up a little more thoroughly than before, that his flush wasn’t entirely obvious.

 

 “You should’ve been more careful about getting water in the wound,” Derek said after a moment, “you don’t know what’s in that water.”

 

 “Yeah,” Stiles offered prodding at his ankle a bit in search of a distraction, satisfied with the only minor tenderness and reduction in swelling. “I wash in this stream near enough every day and haven’t caught anything yet and the wound is all closed up.”

 

 Derek definitely had a superiority complex, he seemed to be having a hard time subduing the urge to mind Stiles and even though some of his orders and advice may have been right, after being alone for so long, it was hard for Stiles to heed him. Even before the world ended, he and his dad had sort of been…equals in their household, both of them chipping together to keep it running in between his dad’s job and Stiles’s schoolwork.

 

 “Oh,” he said, as it struck him and he glanced up to see Derek still watching him, apparently oblivious to nudity – a werewolf thing, Stiles decided as he continued, “I get it. You’re an alpha.”

 

 Derek frowned, visibly suspicious of where Stiles was going with this.

 

 “You’re an alpha so…you have this instinctual urge to take charge, set the perimeter, ensure a food supply, care for the pack, right?” Stiles stood as unselfconsciously as he could and reached for the old rough towel he’d scavenged long ago, “I get it, I do, but I’m not really up for the role of beta, big guy. I don’t think even my dad really expected me to follow his orders half the time. I was always a bit of a headstrong kid.”

 

 Derek gave him a look that clearly said, _am I meant to be surprised?_ “Reckless,” he corrected.

 

 Stiles snorted. “I’ve heard that before.” He managed to clothe his lower body with minimal awkwardness by avoiding Derek’s eyes but as he reached for his shirt, still careful of his injuries, Derek’s voice stilled him.

 

 “You’ve healed well.”

 

 Stiles couldn’t help but notice that Derek seemed confused by that. “Is that a bad thing?” he prodded.

 

 “No, you’re just…healed _really_ well, more than I expected, that’s all.” He seemed to want to say more than that, ask more than that, but by the time Stiles had zipped up his hoodie against the oncoming chill and dragged the towel through his damp hair, Derek was still just watching him. Stiles thought he looked assessing, like he was trying to figure out Stiles and his little bag of supplies.

 

 “Err, sorry, did you want to…?” Stiles trailed off pointedly and gestured with his towel and bag of supplies. It was unhygienic and maybe a little gross to offer the towel but he felt like Derek was waiting for something.

 

 “I washed up this morning before I fetched the water,” Derek said, leaving Stiles still clueless as to what was running through his mind. “You’re not pescetarian are you?” Derek gestured to the bird in his hand.

 

 “Because of my fish/berry/veggie diet? Nah,” Stiles said, picking up his crossbow and his dirty clothes and heading back in the direction of the tower, Derek falling easily into stride beside him. “I like the eating just not the ehhh, hunting? I sort of talk to the animals around here and I’m sorta…” He didn’t want to say squeamish but Derek was smart enough, he probably got it. “Sort of makes me a hypocrite I know, wanting to eat the meat but not kill it?”

 

 Derek shrugged. “Sure, but that’s no different to most humans.”

 

 Stiles gave a snort of a laugh. “Thanks, dude, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

 

 He wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t had meat of the non-fish variety in so long or because he hadn’t eaten something he hadn’t made in what felt like an eternity, but when they came to the roasted bird Derek had caught, it was the most delicious thing he’d had in years. The fact that he had more than his own voice for company probably didn’t hurt either.

 

*

 

 The light in the old radio tower was muted orange from the candlelight, the creaking wood only background noise to the companionable silence that filled the room. They were both sitting cross-legged on the well worn rug, focussed on the stack of cards Stiles had used for solitaire so many times that the edges were worn. The candles were arranged around them to give them light as Derek taught Stiles to play Gin after patiently indulging him in countless rounds of snap.

 

 “… _Curly Fries, Pepsi, Pop Tarts, Doritos_ ,” Stiles continued mournfully. “ _Gears of War,_ man, do you know how much I could’ve used an Xbox in the last couple of years?”

 

 “It’s a wonder you didn’t drive yourself crazy if all you’ve done is list the things you wish you had,” Derek said, shuffling the cards for the next round.

 

 “It’s an indulgence I gave up years ago for the sake of my sanity,” Stiles conceded, taking up his little stack of ten cards Derek had dealt and turning them to face him without really seeing what they were. At first it had been just something to distract him from the less material things he really missed, but in the end it’d started to make him resent their loss. It hadn’t been conducive to mental health.

 

 He chewed the inside of his mouth for a while before asking tentatively, “what was it like for you, before?”

 

 Derek didn’t seem to know how to respond, brows drawn together as he looked at the hand of cards in his grasp.

 

 “None of us realised how bad it was, where we lived,” Stiles offered, voice low, soft in the intimate gloom. “I was fourteen and everyone kept saying it wouldn’t happen where we were, not to us, that they were making it sound worse on the news than it was. Then it just _was_. It was worse. My dad came home and told me to pack all the food we had… It was surreal, you know? That day I’d been to school and played _Call of Duty_ with Scott and then mooched in front of the TV waiting for dad to come home like it was all normal. I was so naïve.”

 

 Eventually, Derek muttered, “we all were.”

 

 Derek told him haltingly about how his family had reacted when the alpha pack outed their kind to the world. He told Stiles about how his mother, a respected alpha had fought against them, had tried to keep the peace and how most of his family had been lost in the riots as things got worse, trying to defend their town. But some of the humans had been afraid, had targeted the newly exposed Hale family with that fear and driven them out.

 

 “There weren’t many of us left then,” Derek continued hoarsely, “my mother took us to _Beacon Hills_ , where my uncle Peter was in charge of the nature preserve.”

 

 “ _Beacon Hills_ ,” Stiles chimed in, unable to stop himself at the sound of his home on another’s tongue. “That’s where I’m from.”

 

 “I know,” Derek said dryly.

 

 “Peter Hale, right? He had a daughter, Malia, I think she was the year below me in middle school. My dad used to work with Peter a lot when kids snuck into the preserve to smoke pot or get drunk or…” he trailed off, eyes widening. “Oh my God, Peter and Malia were werewolves?”

 

 Derek’s smile wasn’t entirely soft but it was definitely more than half amused despite the gravity of the topic. “Yes. Most of my family were.”

 

 “Only most?” Stiles asked.

 

 “Werewolves have been co-existing with humans far longer than you’ve knowingly co-existed with us. A lot of my family were human.” Their game had halted as they’d talked, though Derek had kept a firm grip and focus on the cards in his hands as if his life depended on the hand he’d been dealt.

 

 A sharp gust of wind rattled against the sides of the tower, making the wood groan subtly. Stiles cocked his head and heard the expected rattling of the aerial on the roof. He stared at the silent radio for a while, thinking how much things had changed in just a few days. He still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming. Although if the dull pain still in his battered body was any indication, he was most definitely awake.

 

 Besides which, he wasn’t sure even he had enough imagination to make up someone like Derek.

 

 “So your uncle took you in?” Stiles asked after a while, when it seemed Derek had fallen prey to his memories.

 

 “Mmm,” Derek murmured, setting his hand of cards down at last and reaching for the water that they’d brought up with them before settling in for the night. “My mother, me and my two sisters were all that was left of the pack. He took us in.”

 

 It was something to hide behind, to focus on rather than an actual thirst, Stiles thought.

 

 “It wasn’t long before things started to get worse even in an out of the way town like _Beacon Hills_ ,” Derek said, lifting his eyes to Stiles at last, perhaps because of Stiles’s revelation earlier that he hadn’t realised how bad it was until it was too late. Because they both knew how well _Beacon Hills_ had done to survive as long as it had. Years after Stiles had watched the capitals fall on some of the last television broadcasts…

 

 “I was twenty-eight when those things came to town. It was chaos. They obliterated the deputies that tried to keep them back. I made a beeline for the house, trying to get my mother, Peter, anyone for backup, but when I got there…”

 

 Stiles stiffened as a tendril of information stretched back through his mind, just glimpses of his dad on his phone as both he and a then twenty, maybe twenty-two year old Stiles had packed frantically. Snatches of conversation he hadn’t meant to hear. His dad saying, _“fire down at the Hale House… tried but… they’re gone, they’re all gone…”_

 

 Slowly uncertainly, Stiles reached out to squeeze Derek’s shoulder and to his surprise, Derek just looked right at him, before dipping his chin to hide any visible emotion.

 

 “Those things…they came out of the blazing house. I couldn’t hear any heartbeats, but I could smell that my family had been in there, I smelled singed flesh and…” Derek set his jaw, grit his teeth so hard Stiles thought he could almost hear them creaking. “They were like a plague. Wherever they turned up, death followed,” Derek almost whispered darkly, the sound of it haunting in the dimness, sending a prickle of unease through Stiles like that of his childhood self, watching horror movies round Scott’s house when Melissa was at work.

 

 “Things?” Stiles asked, tongue swiping at his dry lips, though he thought the tight fear that was so familiar even after all this time told him he knew exactly what Derek meant.

 

 They’d both seen the same nightmare. Lived it.

 

 “The bone men.”

 

 Stiles remembered Derek’s expression now, when he’d heard Stiles describe what had marred his face. It had been as shocked, haunted as Stiles felt now, at the thought of what those things were capable of. The realisation that they had been what ended everything. So Stiles had been right, they did own the world now.

 

 “I still dream about them, you know?” Stiles offered into the haunted silence. “More than my dad or anything else. Those things, they were… And the last one I saw a couple of years ago just…” He dragged his fingers slowly over the scars across his face. “It was like when it touched me it was just… _death_. Like it marked me for it and it’s going to catch me up one day.”

 

 Derek sat up straight and looked right at him. “That’s not going to happen,” Derek said firmly, resolutely. Maybe it was the alpha in him that refused to lose someone it thought of as his charge, but Stiles thought it was the statement of a man who refused to lose anymore to the things that had torn his family from him.

 

 During the quiet that followed, it became apparent that Derek wasn’t going to move either and Stiles, feeling awkward in stillness in every sense of the word, declared, “Go fish.”

 

 Derek scowled. “We aren’t playing _Go Fish,_ ” he complained, grumbled, really, but picked up his cards again, clearly grateful for Stiles’s attempt at diffusing tension, or at least, his attempt to give them both a simple act to hide behind.

 

 A handful of games in, Stiles bristled at the sound of the rigged wind chime alarms long established in the trees surrounding the clearing below. He jerked upright, snatching up his crossbow and making for the door. His steps were clumsy, a little tentative both from his still tender ankle and from sitting on the floor for so long. He fumbled for the flood-light he’d rigged to the wooden railing around the balcony area outside and turned the sharp flare of light to the trees below.

 

 All was still, the breeze dying momentarily so not even the trees moved.

 

 Stiles frowned, jerking the light along the treeline. The way he’d set the chimes, they would only sound if directly grabbed or brushed against. He didn’t feel the tingle, the suggestion of otherworldly presence but he’d never relied on a streak of luck he was mostly certain he’d imagined. He felt Derek come to stand beside him, his approach slow, assessing. When Stiles eventually tilted his gaze enough to catch Derek’s expression, he saw crimson eyes focussed on the pool of light below.

 

 Derek visibly sniffed, nostrils flaring, then seemingly without thinking, he reached out and covered Stiles’s hand that directed the top of the flood light.

 

 “Here,” Derek murmured, almost inaudibly, the warm pressure of his hand guiding Stiles and the light slightly to the right. “Do you see it?” Derek’s voice was close and soft, his hand still over Stiles’s like it was nothing.

 

 Stiles squinted, leaning forward against the balustrade, wood creaking warningly with his weight. He _just_ made out a large brown shape, frozen probably in shock of the light just inside the clearing. “A deer?”

 

 Derek nodded, retracting his hand and leaning forward on his elbows over the wooden rail, not at ease but deep in thought, still close enough for Stiles to feel the heat from his body. It was a comfort, even with the moonlight casting a haunting glow in the dark.

 

 After a long moment Stiles shut off the light but did not move otherwise, head slightly inclined, staring unseeing at where the deer probably still stood below. He frowned. “No animals have ever really gotten this close,” he said thoughtfully under his breath, more to himself out of habit than to Derek. “First the mountain lion, now the deer.” Nothing ever really came within the bounds of the tower other than a bird flying overhead now and then. He assumed the generator put them off or maybe some radio signal or something. Derek’s pensive expression told him he had his own theory but he didn’t seem up for sharing.

 

 “Something is coming,” Derek said, voice low, ominous with only the moonlight to illuminate his features. He was staring out across the treetops as if they held the answers for what was to come and though his face was young and smooth and handsome, his eyes looked like they had seen worlds beyond his years. Horrors just like Stiles had encountered, perhaps worse. “Something is making them flee this way. We shouldn’t be here when it comes.”

 

 Stiles, resting his arms on the balustrade in an unwitting mimic of Derek’s position, turned his head to stare across the sea of trees, a thick mist settling across the treetops beyond as if this world of theirs were an island in an ocean of fog. It felt strange, standing out here on top of the world and not feeling alone. Even if the thought that his dad was actually out there, maybe staring up at the same sky made his chest ache.

 

 “When do we leave?” he asked, throat feeling a little raw, his words churning out like they were laced with gravel. Out of his peripheral vision he saw Derek tilt his head and turned his own just enough to meet those eyes that were red no longer but still shining as they caught the moonlight all the same. A moment of understanding, more than words could offer seemed to pass between them. Derek surveyed him like he was looking for something, assessing Stiles in a far more pivotal way than just his physical wellbeing.

 

 “We need to prepare what food we can to take with us; there might not be a lot on the road. I can…we can make some jerky. We can probably dry some of the greenhouse products too.”

 

 Stiles nodded slowly. It was…difficult still. This wasn’t home but it’d been the only safety he’d known for so long. He chewed the inside of his cheek as he thought of the time he’d spent cultivating the food in the greenhouse and knew a moment of fear for the path ahead, even if the safe little world here had been a lonely existence, even if it felt like it was becoming less safe.

 

 Derek gave him a look that wasn’t quite a smile, like he knew what Stiles was thinking and dipped his chin, as if embarrassed by the display of emotion, before returning his gaze to the treetops once more.

 

 Neither of them spoke or moved for a long time.

 

 

 

 Sleep that evening was fitful and full of dreams of red eyes in the darkness. Somehow, he knew that they were Derek’s red eyes, his alpha eyes that were swallowed by the skull of a bone man and followed by a flash of talons like those of the mountain lion. They tore across his chest, opening him up until he just _knew_ that everything that made him was spilling out until there was nothing left. He reached out, fruitlessly trying to cup the spray of blood that was his soul, moving fast and frantic as it slipped through his fingers, turning to ash as it fell.

 

 Stiles jerked awake, heart pounding, cold sweat soaking through his shirt and he threw the blanket back without thinking, clasping at his chest in a blind panic. He swallowed, his frantic search for breath steadying as he felt the telltale soreness of his injuries from the mountain lion, but not the blazing agony he’d dreamt of as his soul spilled like blood.

 

 “Are you alright?”

 

 The voice was soft and a little sleep-drunk but concerned nonetheless. Even so, Stiles jumped, still not expecting a voice to call out in concern when he woke in a state, not after years of waking to no sound but the wind. His eyes flew to where Derek lay, pushed up on one elbow to look at him.

 

 “Sorry I woke you,” Stiles mumbled, voice hoarse. He scrubbed a hand across his forehead to wipe away the beads of sweat.

 

 “It’s fine,” Derek offered, still mostly sounding half asleep. He seemed to consider Stiles for a beat, as if he wanted to say something else. In the end he settled on repeating uncertainly, “are you alright?”

 

 “Yeah,” Stiles sighed roughly, frustrated and tired. What else could he say? No, not really I think I’m a bit broken? He wondered if the rumours that werewolves could smell a lie were true because, again, Derek looked as if he wanted to say something to that, but instead he turned slowly back into his borrowed sleeping bag.

 

 Stiles rubbed absently at his tender ankle, staring at the map nailed to the wall over the bed with the little pins in it, a line of red string linking them all to display his path across the country since he’d last seen Beacon Hills. The end of the string hung limply in a knotted ball from the last pin in _Salvada Forest._ Looking at it now, at the sad, dusty, faded thread, he thought it looked like he’d given up, now that he knew there was something worth pressing on for.

 

 He squinted in the dim light at the names of the cities and towns, the miles and miles of road that lay between _Salvada Forest_ and _Orelia Lake District._ It seemed an impossible distance. He ran a finger over the nearest towns. They’d have to hit a few towns for supplies where possible, the highways were mostly open but the carnage from the riots and precautionary methods from the army had blocked it in places. He had no idea what type of car Derek had or if it could even cope with certain terrains. He still had some pencils in the drawer under the neglected radio. He’d have to try and plot their path.

 

 Long after his hand had fallen away, stopped tracing the possible paths up the country to where his dad would be, long since he’d stopped rubbing absently at his tender ankle, he realised that Derek’s breathing had evened out and turned his head to look at him. What he saw was not Derek asleep in the worn sleeping bag, but a large black wolf curled up on top of it, tail swept across his nose where it rested on his front paws.

 

 Everything in Stiles stilled. He’d never seen a werewolf this close, especially not one at rest and the only other time he’d seen Derek in this form, he hadn’t had time to look. Looking at him now, he realised that Derek had probably avoided wearing this shape since their initial meeting. Whether it was because of the nature of that first encounter or Derek’s general experience with humans seeing him as a wolf, it was hard to tell. He must’ve gotten on well with the humans of the settlement if he was trusted with their medical care but his family had been driven out of their home just for being werewolves, hadn’t they? That kind of occurrence had to leave a mark.

 

Even after all he’d seen, it was still hard to believe that this wolf was the same man he’d shared meals, his space with for the last few days. But that disbelief didn’t come hand in hand with repulsion, a little instinctive apprehension maybe, born of ignorance but not hatred.

 

 Slowly, unable to curb the impulse to curiosity, he slipped off the bed and crept quietly on the balls of his feet. Slowly, he lowered himself to the wolf’s side and reached out before he could think better of it, but as he did so, Derek’s pale, complicated green eyes cracked open in the wolf’s face.

 

 Stiles froze but Derek didn’t jump in shock to see him so close or growl in warning, he just lifted his head, watching. It was as if he wanted to see what Stiles would do before deciding how to react.

 

 “Do you usually shift while you sleep?” Stiles asked, unable to keep the ripple of awe from nipping at the edges of his voice. He hadn’t seen Derek this way but that didn’t mean Derek hadn’t shifted while they’d both slept.

 

 Derek shook his head slightly, a gesture of understanding that made a little burst of breath, almost a laugh pull from Stiles’s chest. He nodded with a small smile, holding Derek’s gaze as it perused him uncertainly.

 

 Holding his breath, Stiles stretched out his hand, letting it reach out almost of its own volition on its original path to touch the black fur. There was a moment of doubt, where neither of them knew what would happen, then Derek stretched his neck subtly, just touching the tip of his nose to Stiles’s palm. It was cold and damp. Stiles’s lips twitched at the feel of it, at the relief of the display of trust, that and the implication that Stiles could approach the wolf without fear in spite of all that had happened, without prejudice or judgement. 

                                                                                            

 Derek stared at him a beat longer, before laying his head back down and closing his eyes. Even if he didn’t actually sleep until Stiles was back in bed and under his own blanket, it was still more trust than either of them thought they had left to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! :) The pace picks up in the next chapter I think, I hope to have it up in two weeks.


	3. Purple Fields

Chapter Three

**Purple Fields**

_Stiles had found a house that hadn’t been in too much of a state of disrepair. It hadn’t been looted for a start, unlike the houses in a lot of the places he’d passed through. He might’ve said it was a nice quiet house on a nice quiet street, except pretty much everywhere was quiet now. An older family had lived here, he thought. It had that mature but cosy air to it and the master bed had looked clean enough so he’d taken the opportunity to clean his sleeping bag and curled up under the duvet there. It’d been dusty but serviceable enough after a shake out._

_He’d woken with a start, with no recollection of dreaming but with a heart that raced in his chest nonetheless. He’d clutched the duvet to his chest on instinct, staring around in that instant confusion of his whereabouts he still wasn’t used to._

_Still breathing a little ragged, he padded quietly into the bathroom to find his now dry clothes and sleeping bag that he’d hung up along a makeshift washing line across the room. Pulling on his clothes, having long learned to always be prepared for a quick getaway, he repacked the sleeping bag and carried his duffel down into the living room._

_The family had left everything behind. Stiles couldn’t help but think that maybe they’d never come home at all, never packed up their valuables and headed for safety. There were family photos on the walls, laundry in the washing machine that reeked from being left and a station wagon parked in the garage that he’d siphoned fuel from earlier. There was a little food in the cupboards, nothing much, so maybe they’d just gone out for groceries and just…_

_There was a big squashy corner sofa that he settled back into, legs outstretched as he stared at the blank television. There was a big mirror over the fireplace and it filled him with unease to see the shadows of the room and the dark open doorway reflected in it. He hesitated, before snatching the tablecloth from the dining table and hooking it over the mirror. He took slow, hesitant steps backward, questioned his sanity and then still closed the door for good measure._

 

 Pathetic, Stilinski, pathetic, how have you even survived this long?

 

_He resumed his seat on the couch, but found his eyes riveted to the pale white cloth hanging over the mirror. It was almost as bad as seeing the half-imagined reflections. In the darkness it looked like the ghosts he and Scott had dressed as with wide, sweeping arms, ready to swoop. He closed his eyes determinedly, forcing himself to breathe even and steady._

 One, two, three, four…

_He’d already packed the ridiculously preserved cupboard foods the family had left. They must’ve had a son about his age because the smaller bedroom had held a few comics and books he’d stashed too._

 …Five, six, seven, eight…

_Each breath came a little easier. He forced himself to go through the calming exercises that his childhood therapist had taught him when he’d started having panic attacks after his mother had died. He started with his toes, slowly relaxing them, then his feet, his calf muscles, his thighs, every bit of him, inch by inch. It took a few tries for his brain, which kept leaping back into flight mode at every imagined noise in the house, at the feeling of being watched in the dark but he must’ve drifted off in the end because he didn’t remember getting to his fingers during the exercises._

_When he woke next, it was still mostly dark, with just the slightest grey light outside signalling that dawn wasn’t far away. He squinted, realising he’d turned his head in his sleep on the comfortable couch to face the windows. The diminutive light was creeping round the edges of the drawn curtains. Though he was slow to wake, his senses sluggish with exhaustion, there was something wide awake and screaming at the back of his mind, the alarm growing fiercer and fiercer the more thoroughly he woke._

_A frown creased his brow as he tried to place it. It wasn’t_ unlike _that sensation of waking after a nightmare and scrambling for the bedside lamp to chase the last of the demons away as you called for your mom or dad. But there was no bedside lamp, no electricity to light the room, no mom or dad, no nightmare, even, he was pretty sure. It was like he’d woken from his calm sleep_ into _the nightmare_.

 

  _His fingers curled by his cheek as he drew in a breath. That feeling wasn’t going away. His chest felt tight, as if something were pressing on it. His limbs felt heavy, no,_ paralysed _and he squinted hard just in case he was still dreaming. His entire body flexed, fingers curling tight but unable to rise further. He drew breath into his tight lungs, gasping as if the air were too thin and it took all his strength to turn his head. When he did, his heart stopped._

_A shadow loomed over him in the dimness, a hulking, unnatural shape of pale bone with twin crimson flares within. A scream worked its way up his throat and got stuck, as suffocating as the fear. He flailed, or tried to but was frozen in place by the creature’s piercing glare, his heart hammering so fast now he thought he might actually die from the shock. He was trapped in the dark with the shape of his nightmares._

_In horrifying slow motion with blood rushing like a tempest in his ears, he watched as the clawed hand pinning him in place rose, poised to strike. His eyes widened and there was a brief moment, a beat where the creature tilted his head, the way a scientist might as they considered the subject they were about to dissect. It was long enough._

_A scream tore from Stiles’s lungs and he threw himself sideways, seizing the base of the low glass coffee table and swinging it with all his strength. It crashed into the creature’s legs, glass shards making it stagger back. Stiles dove over the armchair that sat adjacent to the sofa and snatched up his duffel, leaping over the blanket of glass. He aimed for the door, but as he swung toward it, the creature lashed out, swiping for him. Its talons snapped shut around air, lines of searing pain blazed across Stiles’s face, the claws renting his skin like paper and sending him reeling back with a howl of agony._

 

 When Stiles woke, drenched in sweat and his throat raw, it was to the sight of Derek sitting upright on the floor, watching him silently. He’d gotten away that night, he knew he had, the scars on his face that he traced absently in the darkness were proof of that. But they were also proof that the nightmare had been real, that the dark place his dreams returned to more and more often lately were real too. And in the dreams, he never escaped. He never had escaped really, he supposed, the bone men haunted him every time he closed his eyes.

 

 Derek’s gaze remained on him and when Stiles met his he found a knowing, equally haunted look. They both knew. They both felt the same.

 

 Neither of them spoke until the sun came up.

_*_

 

 Stiles lay the strips of jerky in the container he’d steam sterilised as best he could and dried beforehand, thinking absently of his mother and how, when she was alive, their kitchen had always seemed stacked with Tupperware boxes. She had been great at budgeting and making things stretch just that little bit further, seemingly out of nowhere.

 

 He supposed that’s why he’d collected the boxes while he’d been running back and forth from the nearest town when he’d first set up here, when the Jeep had still been running. It was an old habit that she’d taught him that had probably helped save him as much as her love of her garden had.

 

 A tired smile ticked at the corners of his mouth. His ankle felt fine and there was only the barest ghost of an ache across his chest now, a little tightness across his skin where the claw marks were healing, but he felt shattered with tiredness.

 

 He caught Derek watching him, from where he was adjusting the struts of wood that formed the makeshift rack over the smoking fire-bed where they were drying the food. Derek had clearly done it before and while it felt like blasphemy to dry the vegetables he’d cultivated, it was better than wasting them. They almost had the last lot done now. He wondered if Derek’s sense of smell is what made him a dab hand at it, if he could smell when the food was done.

 

 “The dreams are getting worse.” Derek offered, a statement not a question as he kept his eyes on the surround he’d mocked up to help maintain the temperature over the food. Stiles hadn’t noticed until they’d started drying the food just how diligent Derek was about the fire, the candles upstairs, any naked flame and couldn’t help but think that he knew exactly why that was.

 

 Dragging a hand up from the base of his neck over his too long hair and rubbing in tired frustration, Stiles just dipped his head. “Yeah, they’re…yeah.” He’d had them often enough over the years, but not every night, not every time he closed his eyes. He was thirty years old, his life since he was fourteen had been an exercise in constant vigilance and yet he’d never felt as exhausted as he did now. It felt like something was pressing in on him, a constant, worsening weight on his chest, slowly but steadily suffocating him. He swallowed, rubbing a hand at his throat absently, only realising his fingers had wandered unwittingly to his scarred face when Derek came to stand in front of him.

 

 Slowly, as if believing any sudden movement would break Stiles’s tentative trust in him, like Stiles was the wolf, Derek lowered himself to his haunches until their eyes met. His face was a little grubby from the smoke, streaked with a light sheen of sweat but his eyes had never looked more bright. Stiles took up the map he’d been working over before he’d had the dried meat to box, feeling oddly exposed under that gaze.

 

 “I think I’ve got our basic route set out,” he said, dragging a fingertip along the path he’d drawn in pencil. Big crosses marked the places he’d known to avoid from his journey years ago, as well as the places Derek had said were dangerous or blocked from abandoned cars. He set the map down on the makeshift tree-stump table and used the filled Tupperware to pin it in place at the corners against the breeze that was picking up.

 

 He chewed at his thumb knuckle as he concentrated on the path.

 

 “This isn’t the most direct path,” Derek said, a question in his voice as he shifted round to Stiles’s side so he could see the map properly. He sat on the same section of nature-felled tree as Stiles. The hesitance in their proximity had become less and less, as the days since they’d met grew closer to two and a half weeks. It was nothing, no time at all to grow comfortable with someone and yet it was also a lifetime for Stiles. He wondered if it was for Derek too. He’d been away from the settlement for six months and likely hadn’t seen anyone since.

 

 He still moved with a deliberate slowness though, like Stiles was a skittish deer he didn’t want to spook.

 

 Stiles watched, thumb sliding up out of habit to trace the lowest fleck of scar-tissue across the edge of his jaw, deep in thought.

 

 Derek reached out to touch the big crosses at various towns and cities, the little petrol can doodles that marked where they’d both thought the most likely places to siphon some fuel would be. Everything seemed stop at the small messy sketch of the animal skull, right over the town Stiles had last encountered one of the bone men.

 

 Stiles’s mouth was suddenly desert dry and he didn’t look up when Derek reached up to hesitantly squeeze his shoulder.

 

 “They’re like...big panther skulls or something,” Stiles murmured, the dark, hard dots in the sketch that were the creature’s eyes staring up at him like they were a conduit of sight for the real thing.

 

 “Bears, I think,” Derek offered and Stiles did look at him then, surprised by the quiet confidence in that correction. Derek gave a sheepish smile. “I was a science major, you know...or I would’ve been. Biology was my main interest, Animal and human. I graduated early, but I only had like a year or so of college before the world went crazy.”

 

 “You were smart?” Stiles said, unable to help the surprise in his voice. Derek scowled at the tone and Stiles laughed apologetically, “Sorry, it’s just…I figured you for a jock with a sports scholarship. You’re sort of…the type, you know?”  
  
 Derek’s tightly drawn frown didn’t fade. “ _Type_?” he repeated.

 

 Stiles shrugged. “You know, athletic build, good looking.” He really hadn’t meant to say the last bit, but he hoped it’d escaped his lips with enough casualness that he could breeze over it. He knew  a beat of mortification at his own lack of brain to mouth filter and added hastily, just to keep the conversation moving far away from that little slip, “We were all about lacrosse in _Beacon Hills_ , you sort of look like you could’ve fit in with our star players.”

 

 “I played basketball in high school,” Derek offered with a shrug, like it didn’t matter.

 

 It didn’t now, Stiles supposed.

 

 “So, smart and athletic, way to ruin the stereotype, dude,” Stiles complained without meaning it at all.

 

 “Sorry to disappoint.”

 

 There was most definitely a smirk in the corner of Derek’s lips and Stiles was about to tease him for it, when it faded at the sight of something else on the map. Derek’s mouth moved soundlessly for a moment before he asked uncertainly, “what are the little stars for?”

 

 Stiles looked, knowing that of the handful of little scratched stars Derek was focussed on the one in _Caelmore_ , a fair diversion from the most direct path to _Orelia Lake._ It was a place that Derek had only mentioned in passing once a few days after his arrival.

_“One day a couple of survivors stumbled across a few of our scouts. Said they’d seen someone that matched Cora’s description with a guy about her age back in an abandoned homestead in_ Caelmore _,_ ” Derek had said, his mind evidently far away, considering the possibility that his little sister was alive somewhere, somehow. “ _Cora was with her boyfriend that day, not at the house._ ” He’d said it with the unspoken yet obvious implication of ‘that day’ being the day the bone men had killed his family and burned the house to the ground, said it with a shrug that belied the hurt pensive expression on his face. _“Isaac was a good kid, I thought initially, if they were together they might have had a chance.”_

Derek didn’t speak for a long time, but when he did his voice was a little hoarse and almost inaudible. “It’s not on the most direct route.”

 

 “It’s only a two day diversion and we have enough food if we’re careful,” Stiles said. “I think there are a few good siphon points too, for fuel. If your sister isn’t there, the other stars, they’re where I think the most likely safe places are that we could check, places they might’ve setup nearby.”

 

 Derek pushed away from the map then, heading back to focus on the drying vegetables and the low curling heat below them. He didn’t turn back to Stiles as he said, “She’s not out there. I’ve been to _Caelmore_ , she wasn’t there.”

 

 Stiles rolled up the map, indifferent to Derek’s pessimism. “So we check the other spots I marked. You came all the way out here, Derek, we have to look. She probably set up nearby if there was a good water source like those survivors suggested.”

 

 “She’s dead,” Derek said, too quick and too terse. He was still facing the light tendrils of smoke rising from the improvised surround. He’d constructed it from sheets of corrugated metal that had once formed the original tower occupant’s supply shed. It made a good enough smoke chamber to help the process and seemed to be enough for Derek to focus on, to use as an excuse to avoid Stiles’s gaze.

 

 Stiles regarded him carefully before saying gently, “Derek, you don’t know that.”

 

 Derek whirled to face him and Stiles jerked at the sudden movement. Derek’s expression was a raging storm, ferocious yet transparent and unable to disguise his anguish.

 

 “She’s _dead_!” Derek all-but snarled. “If I didn’t find her in six months what makes you think we’re going to find her now?”

 

 “Because you should never give up hope unless you have the concrete evidence in your hands,” Stiles said quickly, hearing the echo of his dad in his voice. He talked like a cop, even after all these years, he realised. “I thought I’d lost my dad forever eight years ago and then you showed up and told me he was alive.”

 

 “You weren’t looking,” Derek retorted. “I’ve _been_ looking, Stiles. Ever since those survivors came in saying they saw a girl who called herself Cora that matched her description. I haven’t stopped looking and I’ve not even caught her scent, okay? She’s dead.”

 

 Stiles felt frustration and understanding warring in himself. “Look,” he began, “I know what it feels like–”

 

 “No, don’t,” Derek cut him off. “Because you haven’t seen what it’s like out there. There’s a reason no one would come with me to look for her, because they knew what I didn’t want to accept, that even if she had been alive a year ago, she definitely isn’t now. _They_ hunt any sapient being, they hunt us, don’t you get that? Whatever those things are, they’ve obliterated everything.”

 

 Stiles levelled him with a cool look. “You think I don’t know what it’s like out there?” he asked icily. “What, do you think I’ve been living it up here or something? Playing _house_?”

 

 Derek seemed to start from his defiance at that, at Stiles’s argument. It was as if Derek was so used to half a year of telling himself searching would be a fruitless effort, that hearing someone argue against that was shocking to its core. Derek had almost been arguing with himself just then, Stiles realised, he hadn’t expected an answer.

 

 Stiles reached down for the bowl of the fruit they hadn’t been able to fit on the rack and offered it up. Derek just stared at him, as if Stiles were a completely unexpected sight and slowly stepped closer. The ferocious hurt in him seemed to extinguish like a flame yet when their fingers brushed as Stiles passed him the bowl, Stiles felt the spark of static at the contact. He felt it all the way down to his stomach, tug somewhere beneath his ribs.

 

 Derek took the bowl but didn’t take anything from it, just looked into it as if it held advice for what to do or say next, rather than fruit.

 

 Some of it they were going to take with them to eat fresh for as long as it lasted on the road. The road to find Derek’s sister, to reunite Stiles with his dad.

 

 In the end, Stiles cocked his head to the side as he looked up at him. “I _do_ get that you don’t want to have hope. That’s part of why I didn’t want to believe you, at first, about my dad.” When Derek didn’t visibly shut off at that, Stiles pressed on. “If you thought it was impossible, why did you even try to look?”

 

 Derek raised his eyes to him. Though he was a good six years older than Stiles, with a few grey flecks in his beard and a weary look on his face, his eyes looked so young and afraid. It was like he was waiting for someone to tell him it was alright to have hope.

 

 It was the least Stiles could do.

 

 “If you hadn’t heard my broadcast, you’d still be searching for her wouldn’t you? You don’t want to give up, not really and I’m not going to let you.”

 

 Stiles boxed the last of the fresh fruit up and rose, intent on carrying them up to the tower to keep them cool until they left. Then Derek started forward and the action, after years of vigilance, made Stiles turn. There was a moment where they just stared at each other, before Derek found his words.

 

 “I didn’t mean that you were some clueless kid,” Derek said without inflection. “The map, the greenhouse, the tower it’s…not everyone could’ve made this work, could’ve survived like this. You were resourceful and smart. You came a long way alone when lots of people would’ve given up.”

 

 Stiles gave him a rueful smile. “I resent the implication that you don’t know how I’ve survived this long,” he said, but then his expression softened. “I…thanks, I guess. I’m not… There were times when I thought like…nobody was giving me a damn medal for not giving up, you know? Some days I thought about it–”

 

 “But you didn’t,” Derek said, as if hearing Stiles put himself down or even imply it was not to be borne. “It takes a lot of strength to do what you did.”

 

 Stiles’s lips parted in reply, only to close again without sound. For once, he really couldn’t think of anything to say, in the best way possible. He ducked his head, a little sheepish at the reverence in Derek’s soft voice, before turning toward the ladder once more, boxes tucked into the bag to make carrying them up there easier.

 

 

 That night, Stiles dreamt of them again, woke up in a shuddering cold sweat, fingers clasping at the sheets like a child, knotted until the fibres burned at his taut knuckles. He swallowed, panting for air, heart frantic. His eyes darted around the dark room on instinct, seeking the object of his terror. He came back to himself at the sight of Derek standing by the window.

 

 He was largely in shadow, with the moonlight illuminating his face in profile, arms crossed, expression pensive. He didn’t look at Stiles. The routine of Stiles waking with flashes of the bone men chasing him into panic had probably become commonplace to him now.

 

 Stiles just watched him, fingers loosening from their death grip on the blanket as slowly, slowly, his heart steadied. It wasn’t until his breathing had evened out entirely that Derek spoke.

 

 “Something feels wrong,” he murmured, face ghostly pale under the moon’s touch, profile otherworldly perfect so that for a brief moment, Stiles wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming. For a moment he knew a sense of uncertainty, sure that it couldn’t be real. Derek didn’t turn to look at him, just kept his eyes on the moon outside as if hypnotised. “You feel it.”

 

 It wasn’t a question.

 

 Stiles knew what Derek was suggesting, that these dreams were his body, his subconscious or _something’_ s way of reacting, warning him that danger was close.

 

 He was sure it was so close he could feel it pressing in on him like enclosing walls.

 

 “Tomorrow,” Stiles replied, tasting sweat on his lips. “We need to leave tomorrow.”

 

*

 

 The only consolation about leaving his carefully cultivated (ruthlessly harvested) plants behind that had saved his life was that he’d gotten a lot of seeds from them. He thought about planting them again, somewhere in the settlement, in the garden of whatever home his dad had made for himself. It seemed like an impossible future, too far away and too impossible to even contemplate but that didn’t stop him.

 

 Unease dogged his every step as they had a full breakfast, wanting to make the most of the fresh food while they could. Breakfast or not, Stiles served Derek up his speciality fish and potatoes, part boiled then fried with some of the herbs he’d collected. Somehow, sharing it made the meal he’d eaten most days for two years taste better than it ever had before.

 

 Derek had taken the large door off the greenhouse. The wildlife could claim whatever vegetables or fruits managed to grow without Stiles’s helping hand, though Derek seemed dubious that they would flourish at all in his absence.

 

 Stiles frowned at the thought, even now as he traced his familiar foraging path through the trees. He was so deep in thought that he stumbled, hands flailing out to catch himself on the nearest tree. They hooked in Derek’s jacket instead, caught by strong hands on his elbows that didn’t release him immediately, even after they’d helped to right him.

 

 “Exactly how did you survive this long again?” Derek asked, tone dry but without bite.

 

 Stiles laughed. “Luck, dude, pure luck.”

 

 Derek’s nose wrinkled. “Don’t call me dude.” Even saying that, he took a beat longer than necessary to remove his hands. He stuck close, arm twitching as if on the verge of reaching out whenever Stiles took a near misstep on the uneven ground. The storm the other day had churned the earth into unstable territory. It felt unfamiliar under Stiles’s feet. It wasn’t anything that nature didn’t do daily, change, grow and shift with time, but with the feeling of encroaching danger prickling at the back of his neck was just more of the same _‘wrong.’_

“Where are we going?” Derek asked.

 

 Stiles hadn’t taken this path since he’d arrived and so the note of confused impatience in his voice was understandable, he supposed. He didn’t answer though, just pressed on. It was a bit of a trek and the closer they got the more prickly Derek seemed to become, but he couldn’t…he just had to.

 

 “Stiles,” Derek said with a note of warning but Stiles had already stepped into the clearing.

 

 There was a few feet of green grass, then a sea of purple flowers dominated everything. They were still mesmerising, even after the amount of times he’d visited this place. This was another reason he’d decided to stay. Even back then, there had been something about the then tiny thatch of flowers, growing just at the edge of the meadow that had called to him. He’d been sure they were a sign, a tiny flicker of a reminder of his mother, or at least the rich purple had been. They had filled him with a certainty that he’d be safe here. Then he’d stumbled on the tower shortly after and his mind had been set.

 

 The flowers had spread since then, stretching out like widespread fingers across the grass, or like the long, flowing skirts his mother had sometimes worn, pooling out beneath her when he’d crawled into her lap in the back yard. They’d steadily bloomed too since the first time he’d seen them. They’d grown taller and multiplied, grown stronger even if the world beyond the forest had waned.

 

 Derek had stopped dead at the sight of them and Stiles lowered himself to his haunches.

 

 “Don’t!” Derek cried out, catching hold of Stiles’s shoulder. “Don’t touch them!”  


 Stiles started, hands splayed out behind him to support him as he slipped in surprise at Derek’s panic. “I wasn’t going to touch them,” he said, pushing himself up. He dusted off his now dirty hands on his jeans, crouching on the balls of his feet. They’d grown so tall now that down at this level, they swayed gently above his head height. It was like when he was small and he’d sprawled on his back in his mother’s overgrown flower garden and watched the irises dance along with the breeze.

 

 There were so many good memories he associated with the thriving purple meadow. The vivid flowers had been a comfort, a reassuring shelter sometimes when his thoughts had grown too much. They had soothed him, like their presence had chased the demons from his mind. He’d never touched them though.

 

 The few books he’d found on his travels didn’t have much in the way of wildflowers but just the way their cowled hoods curved around their dark, spider-like centres made him reluctant. He’d just always had the feeling that they were there, they were a comfort but no part of his being wanted to touch. It was an instinctive notion. They were a beauty that stood guard like a dog but were too wild to be touched.

 

When he glanced up at Derek, who he realised had been growing steadily more and more anxious on their journey here, seemed transfixed by the purple sea. The flowers ebbed and flowed before them, subtly moving on the breeze like they were alive. Derek didn’t tear his eyes away from them as he asked, “You…you’ve never handled them, right? Never eaten them or…?”

 

 “Eaten them? I don’t eat anything that grows that isn’t a vegetable or fruit, buddy. Except some of the berries I recognise, if I see them. I’m no boy scout. I don’t know what mushrooms and flowers are edible.” Like he was stupid or something? How did Derek think he’d lived this long, exactly?

 

_Dumb luck,_ Stiles’s mind supplied. It’d been what he’d told himself all this time, after all.

 

 Derek seemed to relax at his answer, though he didn’t release his grip on Stiles’s shoulder. “What…what _is_ this place?” Derek almost whispered and the harsh unease in his voice, the expression on his paled face gave the once comforting meadow a chilling, haunting atmosphere.

 

 Slowly, Stiles pushed up, looking around at the flowers, a whisper of the wind carrying through them like a conspiring, dark promise. Stiles shuddered. He’d never felt unsafe here before, not ever. Seeing Derek’s reaction to it though, _feeling_ the odd, otherworldly chill that nipped at his extremities like an oncoming cold mist made him shift uncertainly. It was as if he were waking from a deep slumber to find the python he’d lovingly nurtured had wrapped its coils around him.

 

 “I came across them when I first arrived here. They reminded me of irises, or the colour did, at least. They were my mom’s favourite.” He didn’t expand on that, admit the comfort they’d provided him over the years, an echo of his mom’s presence, he’d once thought. A protective arm stretching through the meadow and through into either side of the forest now, like an embrace, shielding the place he’d made his home from the outside world.

 

 “They aren’t irises,” Derek said quickly.

 

 Stiles snorted, a little annoyed. “I know that, they just reminded me of them, that’s all.”

 

 After a moment, Derek nodded, his gaze tracing where the flowers spread out into the trees to vanish from sight. He nodded again, clearly understanding something deeper then. “This is why you’ve stayed undetected for so long. The flowers, they’re poisonous to most living creatures but their very presence repels the supernatural.” He frowned as Stiles watched, evidently remembering something.

 

 “There is a path on the far side of the forest. I felt…repelled from it. I just knew it was the wrong path to take, even though I knew it was the most direct route in, to follow your broadcast. I took the long way round. I guess I know why now. I’d never given it a second thought. It’s…part of the flower’s magic, I guess.”

 

 He was still staring at them as if mesmerised and that only made the tight, uneasy feeling swell in Stiles’s throat. His skin was prickling just a little now, in that way. It made dread nip at his senses.

 

 “Are they really that powerful?” Stiles asked, unsure how something so deadly, so strong could’ve been such a large part of his life in the last two or so years without him realising.

 

 Derek nodded again, but the longer he stood there, the longer he seemed to get lost to whatever trance the flowers were drawing him into. Was that why Stiles had spent so much time here? Been drawn to their presence over and over? Wasted hours probably with them, until a downpour or the sudden chill or hunger had snapped him out of it? Had he fallen into their thrall? He swallowed, a little dizzy now with the feeling of disquiet.

 

 “They have many names. I’ve never actually seen them in real life, not in this form.” Derek replied. “When Deucalion and his alpha pack exposed our kind to the world, the first thing he did was destroy every location their emissary could find where these grew, so humans couldn’t use it against us.” His mouth twisted. “My mother and her emissary, Deaton were trying to find some. They thought they could use it against the other supernaturals that were destroying everyone, but they never…”

 

 Stiles was almost vibrating with curiosity, with unanswered questions and the eagerness was only fuelled by the anxious feeling in his belly. He swallowed, mouth dry with it. “What the hell is an emissary? And Deaton, wasn’t he the vet?” He didn’t see how these flowers could stop the bone men, either. Nothing had been able to stop them, not explosives from the military, not bullets not…

 

 He stepped back from the meadow, or tried too. He managed a few backward, clumsy steps but Derek caught his forearm, gentle but firm.

 

 “Stiles,” he said, both an entreaty and a question.

 

 Stiles’s head swam with… _something_. He hadn’t felt it this strongly in so long now and had no way of communicating it to Derek. He just nodded. Yes, he was okay for now but they wouldn’t be. They wouldn’t and it was like trying to speak in those first few paralysing moments after you woke from a nightmare that scared you for reasons you couldn’t even comprehend.

 

 “It’s _Aconitum_ , Stiles, wolf’s bane. But we can use it. Hunters, they used to, centuries ago. So can we and maybe if we can get some back to the settlement, to Deaton, he’d know what to do with it.”

 

 Stiles shook his head. He felt drunk now but not in a good way. “I don’t…what the hell does the vet have to do with it?”

 

 Derek didn’t answer, he just pushed his hand into the pocket of Stiles’s hoody and pushed the gloves Stiles used for most of his work with the plants into his hands. “I…I can’t. It’s…” He wrinkled his nose and Stiles could only imagine what those flowers were doing to his super-senses if they had the power to repel, to entrance.

 

 Stiles frowned, still giddy with his steadily growing fear even as he realised. The flowers had lulled him into calmness, had all-but drugged him, but their true enemy, the supernatural, _Derek_ had been nearly paralysed by them. If Stiles hadn’t been there, he was sure Derek would’ve wasted away in front of them, unable to pull himself back. That instinctive realisation and the sense of alarm made his breath come almost too quick to be useful now, made him scramble to pull the gloves on.

 

 He got it. Derek couldn’t touch them, but Stiles could if he was careful.

 

 “We have to move quickly,” Stiles said, staring around for a moment, thinking, before he pulled out his bag. There was one of his last _Ziploc_ bags in there. They contained a few herbs but he had a feeling these would be more useful. He tipped out the clippings he’d collected before carefully tugging off a few of the flower heads.

 

 “Don’t touch them with your bare skin,” Derek said the faster Stiles worked. Stiles nodded through gritted teeth and he knew that, he did, he knew they were dangerous, deadly, even but…

 

 It wasn’t the flowers he was afraid of, it wasn’t them that made him feel like he had to run. The prickling feeling was screaming in him now. Stiles shoved the last flower he could fit into the bag and zipped it tightly before shoving it in the side compartment of his backpack, then turned.

 

 The forest erupted with sound. The ground beneath their feet trembled. Stiles’s eyes flew to Derek and he darted forward, barely able to breathe for the panic clogging his chest, piercing him like a knife through the heart. Before he’d even taken four strides from the flowers, before he’d even reached the place that Derek stood, staring wildly at the forest behind them, chaos broke through the trees.

 

 Leaves, undergrowth and loose tree limbs sprayed forward like an explosion under the force of the stampede that tore into the clearing. Animals thundered through the tree line, deer and coyotes and birds flashing through Stiles’s vision as Derek slammed into him hard, sending him sprawling sideways on the grass.

 

 Stiles flailed, scrambling forward on his forearms only to stop short as Derek rolled him out of the way in time to _just_ avoid the crashing hooves. Derek scrambled forward, laying flat over him, pressing closer than Stiles had felt anyone in years. The sheer proximity made him freeze. His head jerked up just in time to see the stampede of terrified animals, seemingly every living beast in the forest parting around the meadow of wolfsbane, diverting as if the flowers were a solid wall.

 

 Suddenly, Derek’s weight pressed in on him more firmly. His arms curled protectively around Stiles’s and his head ducked down over his. Just in time. Stiles felt the jerking impact of something slamming hard down over Derek, the impact enough to make Derek jerk and grunt above him, just at the back of his neck over and over. Stiles struggled, unable to bear it, this unthinking sacrifice but Derek was heavy as stone above him, unyielding, pinning him in place, out of danger.

 

 Stiles swallowed, tucking his head down, pressing it to the ground and trying to breathe, really trying. He squinted his eyes shut. His chest felt constricted, his breaths too shallow. He couldn’t _breathe_. The tsunami of wildlife seemed endless, Derek’s weight felt tight and close and yet none of it was what he feared. They had to _move_.

 

 “D’rek,” he grunted out, voice strangled by the lack of air in his lungs. Didn’t he feel it? How could he not when the animals could?! He squinted his eyes shut tighter and pushed, heart pounding so hard now he could _feel_ the blood straining in his veins, starved of oxygen. Then, suddenly, Derek was up, his weight flying so suddenly from Stiles’s back that it left him startled at the chill, which shocked a sharp breath into his lungs. The second he’d drawn it in, Derek heaved him to his feet and snatched up Stiles’s bag.

 

 “Go,” Derek said urgently, “we’ve got to go, right now.” There it was, the panic, the sharp, rushed breath of words that Stiles hadn’t seen behind the mask. Blood was beading down Derek’s forehead, weeping from his hairline. But he didn’t stop. When Stiles hesitated, dazed in the wake of chaos he surged forward, shoving Stiles toward the trees. “ _Go_ ,” he snapped. “Run!”

 

 Adrenaline pounding thick in Stiles’s blood, fierce and potent like rocket fuel, sending him flying through the trees. His weaker ankle twinged but held and he didn’t stop. Every breath felt like razor-blades. A sharp side stitch tore through his diaphragm by the time the top of the tower came back into view. Close. So close.

 

 But so was whatever was coming.

 

 Stiles swallowed the spittle pooling in his mouth from exertion. Every time he slowed he heard Derek’s snarl right behind him, _run, run, run_. But they were running dangerously close to the danger, not directly at it but close, so close.

 

 By the time they stumbled into the clearing beneath the tower, Stiles was heaving, feeling sick with exertion, all his innards cramped tight with breathlessness and crushed into his ribcage. He braced himself hard on the ladder to the tower, head ducked. Maybe it was his brain associating the tower with safety after all this time, believing it was time to rest or maybe adrenaline could simply only take a human body so far.

 

 Derek came to halt beside him. They’d planned to head out today so the two huge duffel bags Stiles had stuffed full earlier were sitting under the shelter. Even so, Stiles didn’t have the energy to so much as take a step toward them. He swore if he took his arm from the strut of the ladder he’d fall down. He swallowed frantically again, determined not to be sick everywhere.

 

 “We have to move,” Derek said. He was panting, sweat had mingled with the blood now to make his hair lay wild and damp on his head but he wasn’t mindless, shell-shocked with exhaustion.

 

 Stiles shook his head. He couldn’t, he just _couldn’t._

 

 “Stiles,” Derek said, with the same insistence that he’d used to pin him to the ground and save his life moments ago. When Stiles didn’t lift his head, didn’t so much as twitch Derek grasped his shoulder. “ _Stiles_.”

 

 “I can’t, I _can’t_ , okay? Just…” But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The crux of his wish to not rely on anyone else? Derek was stronger, faster, he could get away right now, he could keep going when Stiles felt like his organs were about to burst out of his side. And while he wanted to be selfless, wanted to say that Derek should just go, the idea terrified him. He didn’t think he could be alone again now. He didn’t…

 

 “Hey.” Derek squeezed his shoulder a little more firmly, making Stiles jerk his head up at last, just as panic was starting to spike in his already rapidly heaving ribcage. Derek was close. Not as close as he had been, pinning him to the ground but he’d ducked his head a little to ensure Stiles couldn’t avoid his gaze. “Hold it together, alright? You’ve got all this way on your own. Don’t give up now.”

 

 Stiles stared at him, the blood still pounding in his ears, sweat trickling down his neck.

 

 The uneasy feeling was close to peak now, close, so close. Derek must’ve felt the danger, felt the inherent wrongness but he wasn’t moving, he was just staring into Stiles’s eyes.

 

 Stiles had never felt so _opposite_ of alone. He exhaled, long, hard, trying to force the air into a steadier rhythm and nodded. They had to move. They _had_ to. He nodded again and Derek must’ve seen more conviction in him, or at least resolute calmness because he released Stile’s shoulder and seized the almost empty water container and pressed it into Stiles’s hands.

 

 Stiles’s long fingers wrapped around the edges of the worn plastic and just clung there for a moment. He watched as Derek snatched up Stiles’s crossbow from where it hung as well as the bolt holster, as he swung the duffel Stiles _knew_ held the books he hadn’t been able to part with over his shoulder like it was full of air. He brought the container to his lips and if Derek noticed the way his hands shook, he didn’t mention it.

 

 Staring around, he let his breathing steady. His heart was still beating harder, faster with the pressure of awareness that though the animals had fled, although the forest was more quiet than Stiles had heard it in the last two years, they were definitely not alone.

 

 “We can’t stay here,” Stiles almost whispered, taking a swig from the water container at last, then another, before setting it down. The panic had nearly taken over before but he was focussed now. He had to be. Just like he’d had to be all those years ago when he’d found himself alone. If he’d done it then, by himself, he could do it now that he wasn’t.

 

 Just as Stiles picked up the other duffel, Derek plucked up the nearly empty water container and downed the last few mouthfuls. Waste not want not, Stiles supposed, and yet there was something jarring about Derek so readily drinking from the same flask that he’d just had his mouth on. Not in a bad way. More that it spoke of a closeness and implied trust, a unanimity that was still so foreign to him after all this time alone. Like he’d forgotten where the boundaries were. Every time Derek toed a line he’d thought he’d known, it incited a little twitch in his belly, the kind you got when you missed a step going downstairs.

 

 “Ready?” Derek asked as he swallowed the final drop.

 

 Stiles stared at him for along moment, before taking another sweeping glance at the clearing that had been his safe haven for so long. It wasn’t that it had been anything more than that, but it was also familiar, all he’d known. The notion of learning to cope all over again somewhere else, somewhere in the unknown was daunting.

 

 He tilted his head back to stare up at the tower. He’d thought he would have longer to say goodbye to this place but he was out of time. There was distance between them and the encroaching darkness but not enough, not much. He just felt it, the same as he’d felt it that night in that house with the sheet over the mirror. He just knew.

 

 “Let’s go,” he breathed, following Derek’s lead into the trees. His steps were slow at first, a backward retreat so he could let his gaze linger on the radio tower for the last few moments before the trees swallowed it up.

 

 

 They walked, they didn’t run but even that pace was impossible to maintain forever, at least for Stiles. He grit his teeth as he struggled through the test of endurance, he was fit from merely surviving on a daily basis but he wasn’t practiced in this kind of stamina.

 

 “Hey,” Derek called, not even out of breath as he drew to a stop, lowering the duffel and Stiles’s backpack to the ground. “I can’t smell anything nearby, we can stop here, catch a breather.”

 

 Stiles winced at the obvious attempt to preserve his pride but didn’t have it in him to argue. He took the out where it was offered and nodded, flopping to the ground at the base of the nearest tree and letting his head roll back against the body of it. He couldn’t feel the uneasy prickle as strongly either now and he felt reassured by that. The danger was far enough behind for them to restore their energy, or at least for Stiles to.

 

 “You could’ve been all the way back to the car now, right?” Stiles asked without really needing to hear the answer. They’d walked miles, the last slower than the first – because of him. Surely Derek had to realise that he could’ve been far out of reach of danger if Stiles weren’t holding him back?

 

 Derek passed him one of the water containers by way of answer, only lowering himself to the ground beside him when Stiles took it and had started drinking. He remained on his haunches, assessing the forest around them at all times. He took a few sips after Stiles was done without tearing his eyes from the surrounding foliage, then screwed the cap back on before meeting Stiles’s gaze.

 

 “I’m…sorry for crushing you into the ground, I didn’t hurt you, did I?” It was said so stiffly, awkwardly. It seemed difficult for him to put to words, came out halting and hesitant and Stiles just stared at him for a long moment.

 

 He reflected on being pinned to the earth, on the fact that it was the first time someone had been that far into his personal space in almost a decade. It was on the tip of his tongue to make a quip about that apology seeming almost painful for Derek, just as a misplaced defence mechanism, but he’d seemed so earnest that Stiles didn’t have the heart.

 

 “Definitely not as hurt as I would have been if you _hadn’t_ steam-rollered me,” he said by way of acceptance, of thank you. “But don’t you _ever_ put yourself in harm’s way for me like that again, alright? If we’re going to do this, we’re partners, alright? Equals.”

 

 Derek lifted his head a little at that, the notion apparently surprising him to his very core. Stiles supposed it was a startling idea, especially given humanity’s history with werewolves. Derek looked on the verge of articulating that thought but in the end, he shifted as his expression cleared. “I’ve already healed from the stampede, you wouldn’t have,” he said eventually, with a shrug. “It made sense. If it makes sense to take a hit for you, I’ll take it.”

 

 Stiles frowned. That just sounded…it felt… He moistened his dry lips and tipped his head back against the tree again, staring up at the canopy of leaves above. “You don’t care about getting hurt,” he surmised. He hadn’t had someone take a hit for him, stand in harm’s way for Stiles since his dad. It still felt so foreign to allow someone to do that for him. Wrong. “It’s not equal that way.”

 

 “Does it matter?”

 

 Stiles sat up straight at that, levelling Derek with a glare. “Of course it matters. How can it not? I’m not going to be dead weight, you got that? I survived this far, I can move, I can fight, I’m…” What had Derek called him? “Resourceful. I might not be _Superwolf_ but I’m not useless.”

 

 Derek’s brow furrowed. “I never said you were.”

 

 “I _know,_ just–” Stiles cut off, pressing the heel of his palm into his forehead before dragging his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to slow you down. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me, alright? Before, when it was just me, if I was too slow or too stupid or clumsy it only got me hurt, not anyone else.”

 

 When eventually Stiles lifted his head to look at Derek again, those green eyes looked impossibly warm.

 

 “I’ve not had to consider someone else for a long time either,” Derek admitted without inflection, his vacant tone belying the compassion in his face. He stowed the water container, then pushed up, handing Stiles one of the sticks of jerky. “I would be faster without you, but I also wouldn’t have had the first real meal I’ve had in months without you, or the first decent night’s sleep. I’d rather go slow and not have to resort to talking to myself for company.”

 

 Chewing his mouthful, Stiles considered him and everything he both was and wasn’t saying. Derek was a wolf, he supposed and wolves ran in packs. Lone wolves had a higher mortality in the wild. Perhaps it was just another instinct of his, to seek companionship to ensure survival. Stiles thought he could understand that. Humans were pack animals as well.

 

 But maybe it wasn’t anything to do with being werewolf or human, maybe Derek was just every bit as lonely as Stiles was.

 

 It was hard to see how the world had been divided and lost, really, when none of them were so different after all.

 

 “Come on,” he said after he’d finished his jerky and rose from his slumped position on the ground. “Think we can get to the car before nightfall?”

 

 

 They didn’t **.**

Dusk fell with a few miles still between them and the car. After stumbling over his feet in the dark for long enough, with only a wind-up torch to light his path, Stiles cursed and came to a stop. The trees were thinning, they couldn’t be far now but Stiles’s entire body _throbbed_ with negation at the thought of going any further. He rubbed at his eyes, strained from searching the darkness for a safe path through the wilderness and found Derek watching him thoughtfully as he blinked away the spots from his vision.

 

 “How much further?” Stiles asked, exhaling tiredly.

 

 Derek seemed to scan him from head to toe, considering his answer carefully. His gaze came to rest on the crossbow now slung over Stiles’s shoulder as he asked cautiously, “do you trust me?”

 

 Stiles bristled. He trusted Derek enough to believe him when he said his dad was out there, enough to fall asleep near him and share his meals with him. He even trusted him enough to turn his back on him as they made their now dismally slow progress toward the car, the car that Stiles only had Derek’s word was there at all. But it was still hard, still instinct to assume the worst after only experiencing the worst.

 

 He nodded. “Yeah,” he breathed, voice croaky with exhaustion. “Yeah I do.”

 

 Derek nodded just once, a stiff, troubled motion. He glanced out at the darkness, head cocked as if he were listening for company. Apparently satisfied, he held Stiles’s gaze for a beat before speaking again. “I can get there and back to you in less than ten minutes.”

 

 Stiles’s entire world stopped. He trusted Derek, he _did_ but he was also out in the middle of nowhere in the dark with only a crossbow and a small torch to see by. He was vulnerable and Derek was about to leave him there and he couldn’t stop his mind from flashing to the darkest place. Out here the blackness, he was relying on Derek now, to be his eyes. Stiles was skilled enough with the crossbow and he was quick but he was also near enough blind out here.

 

 He didn’t realise his breath was coming out in rapid, sharp bursts until Derek was right there, squeezing his shoulder again just like he had before.

 

 “Hey,” he said, leaning into his personal space. “I’m coming back, alright? There is nothing within miles of us, nothing that can get to you before I do. I’m coming right back.”

 

 Stiles set his jaw, scrabbling to hold onto his pride. He nodded shortly. It made sense, Derek was quicker, he could see, he knew exactly where the car was. It made no sense to break his neck trying to walk the rest of the way. It wasn’t safe to build a fire and camp for the night, not out in the open not…not here.

 

 Not with them somewhere in the trees behind them, however many miles back they were.

 

 Derek was asking him to trust him and it was a lot but it was the only way. He nodded again.

 

 “I’m coming back,” Derek said again, as if Stiles’s reticence were clear on his face. Maybe it was. Stiles squinted his eyes shut the second Derek’s back was turned and slowly slid down the tree so he could keep it at his back, feeling some security in that at least.

 

 The forest was too quiet with Derek gone. Too still. There didn’t seem to be any animals here either, though they’d come across a few birds and deer on their trek this far. That had to be a good sign, right? That the animals they’d crossed paths with hadn’t seemed filled with the same bone-chilling panic those of the stampede had?

 

 He shuddered, though didn’t open his eyes, didn’t dare. What would he see if he opened them? What tricks would his eyes play with the mottled gradients of darkness surrounding him? And what good would it do him anyway? He couldn’t even see what he was shooting at.

 

 The wind picked up, rushing through the trees and making the trees around him whisper.

 

 Stiles couldn’t help himself, his eyes snapped open and he searched the trees with the torch light, winding it a little more to keep it from dimming. He saw nothing. But every noise, half-imagined, every movement half-seen made his heart pick up a little until he realised the noise that was panicking him was his own ragged breathing. He’d gone to therapy after his mother died, he knew that it was a vicious cycle, anxiety, panic made breathing difficult, which made him panic further, which kept the cycle rolling over and over and he had to break it.

 

 He coiled in on himself, tilting the torch light up and dragging his fingertips across the surface of the lens, playing with the light shining from within. He stared at the light shining through the very edges of his fingers, the way it made them glow pink and he concentrated hard on them. He had to breathe, he couldn’t forget everything, forget how to survive by himself after just shy of a month.

_One, two, three…_

 

 He could survive on his own, he’d proved that he could but he didn’t _want_ to. He didn’t want to. He was alone. He was alone in the darkness and he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t…

 

 Over the sound of blood rushing through his own ears he almost didn’t hear it, over the thud of horror he almost didn’t register it but then a flicker of light caught the corner of his eye and before he knew it, the sound of an engine rumbled close by. He hadn’t heard a car engine for so long and the hint of civilisation made his heart clench even as it faltered.

 

 He found himself blinking against the glaring headlights that suddenly blinded him. Then the next he knew, he was staring up at Derek, silhouetted in the headlights. If time had dragged out torturously long in the last ten minutes then it slowed to a stop now. He couldn’t see Derek’s face clearly but Stiles still didn’t think he’d ever seen a more welcome sight. He let out a startled, slightly hysteric laugh that was more of a gasp and pushed to his feet, using the tree at his back for leverage.

 

 His eyes were stinging, he was sure they were and he blinked hard, focussing on snatching up the duffel bags Derek had left with him in an attempt to hide exactly how relieved he was.

 

 “Dude, your baby is a thing of beauty,” Stiles said in admiration, his voice betraying how shaken he’d been just a moment ago as he approached the side of the car. He held it together, steeling himself with every step, determined to maintain his pride.

 

 Derek approached, standing by the open driver’s side door but not moving to get in. Stiles could see he was watching him out of his peripheral vision but could not force himself to look up. He swallowed, clearing his throat a little to steady his voice and delay the moment he would have to face Derek with a face he knew would betray everything he’d felt in the last ten minutes.

 

 “Doesn’t seem like the most fuel-efficient ride for a post-apocalypse road trip though.”

 

 “It does alright, as long as you don’t drive like a maniac,” Derek said without so much as twitching where he stood.

 

 “Surely the whole point of having a car like this is to drive like a maniac,” Stiles mused, sounding a little more like himself even though his hands shook as he pulled open the passenger door and tossed the bags in the back. He hesitated just a beat before lowering himself into the passenger seat and closing the door behind him. The dash glowed in a comforting way, the technology, the lights, the purr of the engine reminding him again of civilisation, of a time before. But even before the world had ended, he’d never been in a car this nice.

 

 Derek seemed to have taken care of it too, despite the miles it’d put in. He ran his fingers reverently across the centre console. “Does she have a name?” Stiles asked as Derek climbed into the driver’s seat at last, the soft noise of the door closing sealing unnerving night out and making Stiles feel a little more secure. He relaxed minutely in his seat, looking to Derek’s face when he didn’t receive an answer. He was illuminated by the radiance from the dash, the little lights reflected in his eyes as he stared ahead at the windscreen.

 

 “No,” Derek said at last, before putting the car into reverse. He gave Stiles a once-over. “Put your belt on.”  


 It was good advice, common sense, a practice he’d always followed but the simplicity of it shocked a little laugh out of him. “Are you telling me to buckle up?”

 

 Derek just glared at him and Stiles shifted back more comfortably in the seat, locking the seatbelt in place.

 

 It was strange being inside a car, especially on the passenger side. For a brief moment it was as if half his life had been wiped away and he was sitting up front in the cruiser as his dad drove them to the drive-through place on the way home from one of his evening shifts.

 

 Derek picked up speed when he found the road just outside the forest and Stiles fiddled with the seat until it was comfortable, before toeing off his shoes. He kept waiting for Derek to snap at him, to leap to the defence of his car which, though a little worn was in better condition than Stiles would’ve ever expected. He supposed until now, it hadn’t had much of a run for a long time.

 

 They were in much closer quarters than either of them were used to as well, even compared to the small living space of the tower. The car was a _Camaro_ , Stiles thought, though the brand on the steering wheel had worn away and he hadn’t gotten a good look in the dark before. They were held close by the car’s design, almost intimately close in a way neither of them were used to. He was sure it wouldn’t take long for him to drive Derek insane.

 

 “I said I was coming back,” Derek said, his voice blunt and almost accusing, renting the silence.

 

 Stiles tilted his head to look at him. “I know.”

 

 Derek scowled at the road, the headlights lit up the path ahead but otherwise it was pure darkness as far as the eye could see. “It didn’t seem like you’d been expecting me to, when I got to you.”

 

 “Derek, I believed you, if I hadn’t, if I didn’t trust you I never would’ve…well, _any_ of this. I trust you, alright? Just…don’t take it personal that it’s taking some adjusting to, not doing everything myself.”

 

 When Derek didn’t answer, Stiles added, “We’ve been over this, right? I know you want to be the alpha here but there are no alphas, buddy. Not between you and me. Or if there is, then we’re both alphas. Equals, ok? I’m adjusting to that, to not calling the shots, to relying on you and you have to do the same for me.”

 

 He didn’t expect Derek to reply, so when he saw the most imperceptible of nods his stomach did a little flip. That agreement, the way _Derek_ relaxed a fraction at his words, perhaps at Stiles’s casual use of a word he’d once used in everyday life, it chased the last of Stiles’s uneasiness away, assisted by the comforting intimacy of the car.

 

 Stiles couldn’t help himself. “Am I like, the first human alpha?” he asked.

 

 Derek’s lips twitched.

 

 Stiles tipped his head back to the window. “Want to play I spy?”

 

 There was an unmistakeable exhale of amused, frustrated breath. “I will rip your throat out, with my teeth.”

 

 Stiles chuckled, the sound tapering off gently into the kind of companionable silence they had both become used to over the last few weeks. The movement of the car, the sounds lulled him into an exhausted yet secure slump, until he was half leaning with his forehead on the glass as the world rushed by outside, unseen. He fell asleep eventually with his head pressed against the window.


	4. Road Block

Chapter Four

**Road Block**

As unfamiliarly intimate as their proximity in the car was, Stiles couldn’t exactly say he disliked it. He still found himself adjusting to it, particularly when Derek reached over for something in the car and his hand or arm would brush against Stiles. Often when Stiles kept turning the volume up on the stereo, thoroughly revelling in the extensive music selection on the connected USB drive, Derek’s fingers would _just_ catch his as he reached to turn it back down again. There was a little jolt in his stomach at every subtle, passing contact and Stiles wondered if it was due to his lack of human contact in the last eight years or because of Derek.

 

 It’d started so slowly, so subtly that Stiles couldn’t even remember when it had begun. Those little brushes passed him, the casual touches had grown steadily more frequent, though with a care that suggested Derek was building Stiles’s tolerance to it up after years of hunger. After a week on the road, he’d come to realise that Derek was a naturally tactile person in spite of his stoicism. Stiles wondered if he had been too, years ago. He couldn’t remember.

 

 They’d fallen into a sort of routine for breaks to stretch their legs and eat, timing them in with stops to siphon fuel or check for supplies where possible. Their searches weren’t always successful so they had to take what they could where they found it. Stiles thought that passing through the incredibly still world without seeing a soul, passing through empty houses and riot-stricken empty streets, searching deserted shopping malls that should’ve been thriving with life was more lonely than his little radio tower.

 

 “Hey,” Derek said, voice soft as they pulled up in a little farming town where it seemed the animals had been set loose and had made the place their own. Stiles thought there should be something morbidly interesting about seeing cows, pigs and sheep wandering through the street and chewing on the grass that seemed to have blended with the country road. It should’ve been fascinating but it was just sad, just as sad as the crudely dug graves or even remains they’d occasionally come across already.

 

 “That drug store looks intact,” Derek continued, glancing around, nostrils flaring slightly as he pushed open the car door and scented the air for unwelcome company. There must have been nothing more threatening than the now wild farm animals because he turned his head back to Stiles with a short little nod, signalling the coast was clear.

 

 “I’ll take the drug store if you want to look for some gas?” Stiles offered, scooping up the rucksack he used for foraging of a different kind now. Even though they took off in different directions, Stiles couldn’t help but feel they weren’t really separate at all. Derek was fast and he could probably hear if Stiles needed him before Stiles could even finish calling out for him. Not that Stiles _did_ need him but all the same, it was nice to know he wasn’t alone, to know someone had his back as he climbed in through the already broken window and scoured the drug store for anything the last occupants had left behind.

 

 The shelves were nearly empty but he scavenged some toothpaste and some antiseptic wipes before approaching the back of the store. He ducked under the counter and found nothing on the shelves back there but the flip-down compartment beneath the counter appeared to have been missed. Due to the jut of the countertop it was invisible unless you knew where to look and he did, thanks to his mother’s part-time job in his earliest years at _Beacon Hills Pharmacy_ , where he used to sit behind the counter and play on his _GameBoy_. He ducked down, jimmying the little lock with his pocket knife and jumping back when the panel, lined with the same grooves as the surrounding wood flipped down.

 

 “Bingo,” he whispered, opening his rucksack and scooping the items into his bag, painkillers, sleeping pills, anti-biotics, anti-inflammatory drugs. He had no idea what could still be used but hopefully Derek’s nose would know. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that these were fulfilled prescriptions that had never been collected. He left the prescription moisturisers, iron tablets and similar items. They could all be useful, potentially, somewhere down the line but there wasn’t infinite space in the _Camaro_. They had to only take the essentials.

 

 As he closed his bag up, he nabbed the protein shake powder that had rolled under the counter too. Then he paused, tilting his head at the sight of a decent sized nozzle bottle and tugging it toward him to read the label. _Water Based Lubricant._ His face flamed at the immediate images that flooded his mind and he made a choked sound, shooting up so quick that he whacked his head on the underside of the counter.

 

 With a pained groan, he cupped the back of his head and curled in on himself a little as he shimmied out from underneath the counter, stumbled, really, his head ringing, his vision swimming. Staggering to his feet, he spied some dropped bandages but as he stuffed them in his bag, he halted at the rustling sound that penetrated the air. His blood ran cold. His head whipped to the side and he stared with horror opening up inside him like a gaping chasm when he saw that the backdoor was ajar. He swallowed, curling his shaking fingers into fists and holding his breath.

 

 Reaching for his pocket knife with clumsy fingers, Stiles lifted his feet and let his toes carry him toward the door. He froze, heart stuttering as it creaked on its hinges with a sudden breeze outside. Breath catching somewhere in his ribs, he forced it out in a quiet, strained slowness before dragging one back in just the same. Quiet, careful, agonisingly difficult. His fingers splayed against the door. He hesitated. He squinted his eyes shut for just a moment, before pushing the door open so hard it ricocheted off the wall outside.

 

 Stiles stopped dead at the sight of the goat that had halted where it’d been gnawing at a tough patch of grass near the door. A little nervous laugh bubbled out of Stiles and he sighed, cocking his head to regard the creature as it turned and fled around the corner of the shop and out of sight.

 

 Stiles closed the door behind him, more out of habit than anything and followed the overgrown grassy path the goat had dashed down, only to find himself at the rear of the grocery store. All the town’s shops were in two straight lines and while the opposite side backed onto the residential areas, this seemed to back onto the overgrown park and woodland that surrounded the little farming town. It reminded Stiles a little of the way the trees had hugged a lot of the houses around _Beacon Hills_ and he felt a little prickle of nostalgia before trying the door of the storage container for the grocery store. It’d been thoroughly raided and what was left even _he_ could tell wasn’t safe.

 

 It probably wasn’t even worth checking the store itself but he had to head that way to meet Derek back in that direction anyway. When he turned, he froze, heart catching in his throat. Three wolves were lurking in the yard just outside the container, the closest of them watching him with its ears pricked. Then those ears slicked back. Its jowls twisted with a rumbling growl of a sneer and the beast lowered itself just a fraction as it edged forward.

 

 Stiles swung the crossbow off his shoulder and took aim as he shuffled backward, toward the door of the container. As he did so, movement from his peripheral vision made him jerk his head round to see another wolf coming up behind him. He swallowed, breath shuddering in his lungs as he scanned the pack encroaching on his personal space, searching for something, anything to get him out of this. He wouldn’t have time to reload his weapon if he downed the first wolf, the rest of the pack would be on him in seconds. He found his back against the six-foot wooden fence and felt his panic surge. There was a large gap where the wildlife, probably the wolves, had torn through it over time, when the last traces of humanity had faded away. It was his only shot.

 

 The frontmost wolf snarled as if it had read his thoughts, read the way his body twitched on finding an exit and Stiles didn’t hesitate. He fired. The bolt struck the ground right in front of the pack and on instinct they recoiled. He dove for the gap in the fence, tossing his bag through and scrambling to follow after it. He anchored his elbows in the dirt on the other side, pushing up to haul himself through and darted for the nearest tree, just hoping he was fast enough.

 

 He almost was.

 

 He reached the tree but up close he couldn’t see a way to pull himself up and then they were on him, chasing him down like a wounded deer. He swung the bow round, making the leader rear back with a snarl and in the moment he gained from that action, he flew for the next tree and launched himself at the lowest branch with all his strength. His torso slammed into the bark and he grunted but didn’t slow, scrambling up onto the branch and swinging his legs up _just_ as the wolves lunged. They circled below him, snapping at his dangling heels as he pulled his bow out once more, cursing when he reached for the bolt holster and felt nothing. He could see it below on the ground now, right by Derek’s feet.

 

 Everything stopped.

 

 Derek.

 

 Stiles had come across werewolves a few times in his travels, avoided them, mostly by his self-pronounced ‘luck’ but he’d never seen their power in action, only the chaos left in their wake. He’d missed Derek taking down a mountain lion with his bare hands and he knew _of_ Derek’s strength, what he could do but seeing it was something else. Stiles still knew a rush of panic at the sight of the pack rounding on him, fangs bared. A cry caught in his throat and he scrambled for the ground, just as Derek braced his stance to the oncoming onslaught, like a man steeling himself in the onslaught of a storm. His eyes burned red and his mouth opened, distorting his face with a roar that made the very earth quake.

 

 The wolves froze. Stiles’s breath caught and he stood, half slumped against the tree he’d climbed out of at the sight of the pack rounding on Derek, absolutely speechless. He watched as the wolves cowered, before dispersing into the deathly silent forest. Derek didn’t move at first, head cocked as if listening. He must’ve been satisfied that the danger had vanished because at last he approached, cautiously scooping up Stiles’s bolt holster and offering it to him.

 

 “They were probably drawn here by all the farm animals,” Derek said as Stiles took it, still staring at him.

 

 “Huh?”

 

 “The wolves,” Derek clarified, his heavy brows drawn in with a scowl. It was an expression that said he’d just realised Stiles hadn’t really moved since the roar that made the earth stand still. His uncertainty was palpable, rife with guarded anticipation of how Stiles might react to the blatant display of his otherness. But the echo of the warning snarl was still vibrating through Stiles’s ears, along with the shock of seeing but a glimpse of Derek’s power. It was all so surreal in comparison to the sarcastic, snarky companion he was struggling across the country with.

 

 For all that though, he wasn’t afraid.

 

 After a beat of silence, one of the goats in the town gave an enquiring bleat in the distance and Stiles couldn’t help himself. A hysterical little laugh bubbled up his throat and escaped without his permission. He shouldered the crossbow, holster and his bag, still chuckling to himself and when he looked up, Derek’s eyebrows were lifted in a mixture of surprise, relief and amusement.

 

 “Have you finally cracked?”

 

 “Dude, that was loud. And it was _awesome!_ ” Stiles declared, feeling suddenly seventeen all over again with wonder, with the frisson of inappropriate humour that had burst inside him. For some reason that shock of it made him feel more like himself than he had in years, even as he was still shaking with adrenaline. His eyes were shining with irrational awed amusement as he continued, “you were all _‘I’m the alpha’._ Apex predator mode, it was incredible.”

 

 He couldn’t stop himself from talking, it was one of those moments where his mouth moved without his mind’s permission. This time he’d apparently conjured the right words regardless though. Derek’s lips twitched and he ducked his chin a little before leading the way back toward the car.

 

 “I found enough fuel to fill the _Camaro_ and the cans,” Derek said as they walked, “and somewhere safe to stay for the night.”

 

 

 The safety that Derek found turned out to be the caretaker’s house in the local school. It was apparently connected to the same back-up generator that powered the school and provided them with light as well as power for the kettle to cook some instant noodles.

 

 The water tank was gas heated so they had no hot water, instead they filled the sink with cold water and topped it up with the kettle to make it warm enough to have a standing wash down in the kitchen. It was still miles better than washing in a cold stream.

 

 There was an old antique mirror in the living room that Stiles stared into, running his hands through his damp hair with the towel around his bare shoulders. He’d stripped down to his boxers to wash and so far had only pulled on his jeans, having gotten distracted by his damp reflection on his search through his bag for a clean t-shirt.

 

 As he stared at his too long hair, he saw movement beyond the doorway leading into the little kitchen. Unwittingly, he caught glimpses of Derek’s bare, hairy legs and arms, the toned muscle of his shoulders as he leaned over the sink to wash his hair. His chest tightened and he couldn’t stop himself from staring, that was until he saw Derek’s head twist his way, where it was half-bowed over the sink. Stiles jumped, turning quickly back to the mirror. He dragged the towel over his hair a few more times to hide his awkward expression. When he next tugged the towel off his head, he saw Derek standing in the doorway.

 

 “You okay?” Derek asked, thankfully back in his own jeans and tugging his t-shirt back on as he spoke.

 

 “Yeah,” Stiles said, a little too quickly. “Yeah, just thinking my hair looks like a crow’s nest. I think it’s gone way beyond artful disarray and well into unmanageable now.” He’d had some hair clippers back in the tower and had usually just shaved it all off. They’d broken some time ago now though and he’d not bothered to attempt to tame it with scissors.

 

 Derek inclined his head a little to regard his reflection. “I could do it.”

 

 “You…you what?” Stiles blinked.

 

 Derek shrugged. “I do my own. I won’t nick you unless you really piss me off.”

 

 Stiles couldn’t help but snort at the casual, deadpan way he spoke of bodily harm and dragged his fingers across his scalp a final time before tugging the towel more fully down around his shoulders.

 

 It was the most unnerving thing, even after all he’d faced in the last few years, sitting in a chair with his head bowed slightly as Derek stood behind him with a pair of sharp scissors. He must’ve failed to subdue his initial flinch entirely, because he felt Derek hesitate behind him, felt him.

 

 When at last there was a touch at his nape, a shiver dragged up his spine for an entirely different reason. His still damp hair was captured between Derek’s knuckles and then the scissors clipped audibly. There was a small pause, as if Derek were waiting for a protest, then he continued. At least when clippings of hair began to tumble down the back of his neck it was an excuse to fidget and shiver.

 

 “Do you _ever_ sit still?” Derek murmured, sounding so close, words tense with concentration.

 

 Little breaths spilled over Stiles’s slightly parted lips. He shifted in his seat at the tiny bursts of heat that prickled over his skin each time Derek’s fingers brushed his neck or scalp. Over the weeks it hadn’t escaped his notice that he and Derek had developed a casually tactile friendship, but there was something that just felt very intimate about the elongated moment they were suspended in.

 

 He swallowed when Derek rounded to stand in front of him, presumably to even out the front of his hair a little. Filled with the swelling urge to fill the silence, anything to cover how much effort it was taking to sit still, Stiles wondered aloud, “do you wonder why they don’t kill the animals?”

 

 “Mmm?”

 

 “The animals. They’re scared. They sensed that those things were dangerous, in the forest, they ran, but even so all the people in this town, in _every_ town, they’re all dead and the animals aren’t.”

 

 For a while Derek was quiet, the only response the soft _snip snip_ of the scissors. Then Stiles made the mistake of tilting his head up to look at him. His eyes locked with pale grey-green. He thought he caught a glimpse, a ghost of something glistening and vulnerable there, before it whispered away behind a blink of lashes.

 

 “Lycanthropy killed most of humanity, the bone men just finished the job on their way to killing every supernatural creature it could find,” Derek murmured at last. He seemed to stare very fixedly at Stiles’s hair for a moment before stepping back, apparently the job done. “I don’t think their bloodthirsty nature extends to animals.”

 

 Stiles got to his feet. He had to move, had to keep himself busy, spend some of the pent up frustration. He ran his fingers through his hair to dislodge any loose strands then dusted himself off over the towel the way he used to when either of his parents cut his hair when he was younger. “What do they even want?” They didn’t seem to eat their victims, not judging by the bodies Stiles had seen on the way. And if they were hungry for flesh, an animal would be as satisfying as a humanoid being, surely?

 

 Derek had stowed the scissors away and now stood to the side, lifting the heavy curtain away from the window enough to peer out into the now dark world beyond. “When I was younger, there were stories about things like them,” Derek murmured absently “About creatures that kill to become stronger, that consume the souls of humanity.”

 

 “And werewolves and all the other supernaturals,” Stiles said, “for whatever reason, they came after all of us. We’re all the same to them.”

 

 Derek looked at him then, expression giving nothing away. After a beat he replied softly, “yes, we are.”

 

 When he glanced in the mirror, Stiles thought he looked more like himself than he had in years.

 

 Before settling in, they cleared up the clippings of Stiles’s hair, which Derek had done a decent job of, actually, leaving it in more manageable, short strands but nowhere near as severe as the buzzcut Stiles had sported when his hair clippers had been working. Stiles arranged the towels on the towel rail and Derek washed the dishes and cutlery they’d used even though it was unlikely anyone would be here again.  

 

 That night by some unspoken agreement they took a twin bed each in the spare bedroom. Stiles couldn’t help but think that Derek, even with his supernatural strength and senses didn’t want to sleep alone, was just as afraid of what lay beyond the walls and of isolation as Stiles was. Not for the last time, he wondered how humans and werewolves, all of them could’ve failed to realise how similar they really were.

 

 

 When morning came, Stiles suggested winningly over breakfast that he drive. His idea was met with a disbelieving brow.

 

 “You’re kidding, right?”

 

 Stiles scowled. “Don’t be such a sourwolf. I made it half way across the country on my own and it was a dead battery that killed the _Jeep_ in the end, not my driving.”

 

 Derek snorted around his mouthful of tea. They’d found some teabags in the little pantry that hadn’t been too bad at all. Derek seemed to be fine with allowing Stiles to nag and argue with his resolute noncommittal facial expressions all the way out to the car, so much so that Stiles was convinced his words had fallen on deaf ears. When the car keys thumped him hard in the chest he had to scramble to catch them before they fell to the floor. He stopped, staring at Derek who was closing the boot with a raised eyebrow that clearly questioned if Stiles was going to argue.

 

 “Partners take it in shifts,” Derek said simply, as if it had been his idea all along and moved passed Stiles to climb into the passenger seat. Stiles scrambled for the driver’s side with much less grace, just in case Derek changed his mind.

 

*

 

_Caelmore_ turned out to be as deserted as everywhere else they’d travelled through. They’d both known Cora and Isaac were unlikely to be there since Derek had already searched there months ago, but some part of Stiles had hoped, had really believed they’d find some clue as to where to go next. There had been a faint scent, a presence but it had been too old to trace the first time Derek had been there and it definitely was the second time.

 

 They searched the next likely location, a place a few towns over that Stiles had marked on the map. It was a place he knew had a good water supply and enough wildlife for hunting to sustain two capable werewolves. When they still found nothing, Stiles could sense Derek’s hope sour. It was palpable, a bitter edge to his every word, movement and expression.

 

 To get to the next likely place Stiles thought could sustain survivors, they had to cross back through the boundaries of _Caelmore,_ use the roads they’d already travelled but this time their way was made even heavier with failure. Stiles could feel Derek sinking into it deeper and deeper.

 

 “We’re wasting time, fuel and food,” Derek muttered bitterly from where he sat in the passenger seat, glaring out at the grey landscape. “If these places were so readily able to sustain life then why didn’t you stay in any of them?”

 

 Stiles flinched at the bite in Derek’s tone, knuckles tightening over the wheel. He set his jaw but years taking the bullet in school had taught him patience. Besides, he could sense the hurt lurking behind Derek’s bark. “Because I hadn’t given up hope yet,” he said simply. He saw Derek turning his head to face him out of his peripheral vision but did not tear his eyes from the road, not even when Derek watched him for a long moment.

 

 “Hope for what?”

 

 “That there was more out there than just surviving by myself,” Stiles replied. “I wasn’t ready to settle.” He’d still been hopeful when he’d been through here, hadn’t been the weary lonely man he’d been when he’d found the radio tower. But he wasn’t chasing his own hope here, he was chasing Derek’s. A quick glance at Derek saw those eyes still fixed on him, but it was clear that Derek didn’t feel his optimism that they were going to find his little sister.

 

 “What is an emissary?” he asked in a reach for a change of subject, a distraction. “You said our old vet Alan Deaton was your mother’s but you’ve never explained what that means.”

 

 Derek watched the world go by, jaw set, mind obviously reluctant to release its hold on his cynical outlook on their search. His fingers that splayed across his denim-clad knees curled in a telltale manner. His entire body tightened in the way it often did, in an attempt to shake off an emotion Derek didn’t want to overcome him.

 

 “They’re druids, the kind that align themselves with a werewolf pack. They keep us connected to humanity, they advise the alpha. Usually only the alpha knows who the emissary is for the pack but when the world went to hell, there wasn’t a place for secrecy anymore.”

 

 Stiles nodded. “So you think he can help us to use the flowers to destroy the bone men?” He hesitated. “But druids…they have power over nature, don’t they? I don’t get why any of them didn’t just step in and stop this all happening when the alpha pack outed the supernatural to everyone.”

 

 “The Alpha pack killed their emissary and the packs that supported them followed suit. The rest..tried.” Tried and failed.

 

 Stiles grit his teeth because it didn’t make any sense. Because Derek had alluded to the power of emissaries on their journey so far and if they had so much power why didn’t they use it? “So why doesn’t he fix it now?”

 

 Derek looked wistful suddenly. “My mother always told us that the emissaries were there to anchor us to our humanity, to advise us, but also to maintain the balance, to never let the scales tip too far once way or the other.”

 

 “Regression to the mean,” Stiles muttered, eyes on the road ahead.

 

 The initial answer was a noncommittal sound, before Derek continued. “The scales have tipped too far, the world is unnaturally changed. I believe Deaton will do what’s necessary to restore the balance of power. I think he might know a way to weaponise the wolf’s bane but we will have to be the ones to use it.”

 

 Stiles glanced to him at the use of the word ‘we’ and chewed the inside of his lip. The ‘we’ shouldn’t have sounded so thrilling and terrifying all at once.

 

 They rounded the gradual sweeping curve of the road but as they came around the apex of the turn, in the distance, down the straight, they saw headlights in the grey oncoming evening. Soft curls of smoke rose from what could only be a campfire. The signs of intelligent life made his stomach jolt as if he’d missed a step, made his mind reel, unable to process. People, there were _people_ up there.

 

 His lips moved soundlessly with a mixture of awe and anticipation, but then he felt how still Derek had fallen beside him. Just from a quick look at Derek’s tense expression, he didn’t think what lay ahead could be good.

 

 Just like that, a frisson of dread rippled through Stiles’s body and he found his fingers tightening around the wheel. His wide eyes darted from Derek to the blockade they were drawing closer and closer to. Whoever these people were, they’d set up camp right in the middle of the damn road with their pick-up trucks parked side by side to form an impossible barrier. That wasn’t something ordinary survivors would do.

 

 “Hunters,” Derek breathed.

 

 Stiles slowed the _Camaro_ down, giving them thinking room, even though it felt like the world was racing by at a mile a minute. “Should I try to drive around it?”

 

 “You won’t be able to,” Derek replied, whole body tense, hard gaze focussed on the blockade ahead. “There are spike strips either side.” He winced then reached for his belt.

 

 “Whoa! Hey, _hey,_ what the fuck Derek? How is that going to help?”

 

 Derek tugged the belt out of the loops hastily, looking at the coil of soft, worn leather in his hands just for a moment. “Don’t do anything stupid, alright?” With no further explanation than that, he tied the belt around his neck. He shoved the shaft of the metal buckle through roughly to make an extra hole, then tightened the leather firmly around his neck. It left the rest hanging limply just as Stiles drew to a stop a few yards in front of the line of the road block.

 

 There were four trucks and around fifteen men and women, all filtering away from the fireside to join a white-haired man at the forefront of the line of trucks. They had a battle-hardened look to them, a thuggish, wild aura. Stiles couldn’t help but notice the makeshift weapons, barbed wire wrapped around baseball bats, knives secured to metal pipes and one seemed to have a shovel that had been filed into a peak. They watched the car with cool, unpredictable eyes, like a pride of lions that had spied easy prey.

 

 For all this, all Stiles could think was, _holy shit,_ _people_. More people than he’d seen in years. He’d thought he’d been all alone in the world, been _convinced,_ in fact. Even before he’d settled in the radio tower he hadn’t seen a person for so long and now there were just so many of them. So many that he felt _dizzy_ with the overwhelming sensation of their eyes on him. It was like the first time walking into a crowded classroom as a child.

 

 His anxiety was spiralling. Derek was staring at them like the apocalypse was happening all over again and Stiles’s breath was coming so fast he thought he might hyperventilate. How did he breathe again? How did he stop?

 

 “Wha…what are those things, strapped to the grills of their trucks?” he practically gasped out.

 

 Derek’s expression tightened. “The skulls of wolves,” he said darkly. Then twisted his head to look at Stiles. “Hey, don’t crash out on me now. You’re the one that’s going to get us out of this, this is your game.”

 

 He should’ve been pleased at Derek’s confidence in him, gratified at the chance to prove himself in their partnership in more than getting his fair share of food, water and fuel.

 

 Stiles gave a nervous laugh. “My game is chess, actually.” He could see the men and women talking to each other without even looking away from the _Camaro_ for a second. “What are they saying?”

 

 “It doesn’t matter,” Derek said quickly. “You get out first and follow my lead.”

 

 “How is it following your lead if I go first?”

 

 Derek glared at him and Stiles drew in a sharp breath before pushing the door open.

 

 “Put your hands where I can see them!” the old man in the centre of the group called out in a gravelly, resounding voice that was far from frail. It struck Stiles with all the force of a hurricane after so long of hearing only one voice and before then, nothing but his own. He’d forgotten how emotions bled into others’ voices, how different accents and tones changed words. Oh God, for just that moment he forgot how to speak and could only comply. He raised his hands above his head on autopilot, staring like a deer caught in headlights. He couldn’t remember how to function in front of others, he couldn’t remember how to cope with it.

 

 It was then that he realised instead of getting out his own door, Derek had slid over the console and out the driver’s door after him. He frowned.

 

 The hunters approached, one of them carrying a crossbow not unlike his, yet the man at the centre looked unarmed. Such was his power over every other man and woman carrying a weapon either side of him, Stiles supposed. The man’s self-assurance did not fill him with confidence. His skin prickled all over at the approach of other humans for the first time in years. Years of loneliness came back to him all at once and he swore that every bodily process screeched to a halt for just a moment at the impact of it. He’d forgotten how to cope with so many people and he wondered if he would have felt so overwhelmed if they had been a more appealing kind of people, he supposed if they ever got to the settlement he’d find out.

Stiles felt himself moments from floundering, from losing it but then he caught Derek lowering himself on his haunches behind him, like some loyal dog and everything in him just stopped. His stomach jerked at the startling idea. It all snapped into place just as the old man and his followers came to a stop before them.

 “You’ve got yourself a dangerous pet there, boy,” the old man said with a smile that didn’t reach his cruel eyes. Eyes that lingered on Derek before rising to meet Stiles’s.

 

 Stiles lifted his chin in defiance to the fear roiling in his belly, to the revulsion of the words on the tip of his own tongue.  Derek was putting his faith in him to get them out of here, to talk their way out of this, play the game. Somehow, he managed to grasp his words, even as sweat trickled down the back of his neck. “The dangerous ones are the best kind of guard dog, if you train them right at least.”  


 The old man inclined his head slightly, as if assessing Stiles in a new light, before letting his eyes fall to Derek again. “And you’re sure it’s trained?”

 

 Derek, to his credit, didn’t even so much as twitch at being objectified. Stiles bit the inside of his cheek and only hoped his ability to plough through his discomfort, let his mouth carry him off on a tangent hadn’t diminished with disuse. He felt rage in his throat like a knot, hard and unyielding, swelling to make his voice rough as he gave a little laugh with no real humour. “Do you think one-hundred-and-forty-seven pounds of pale skin and fragile bones could’ve made it this far if it wasn’t?”

 

 Loathing himself every moment, he clicked his fingers, right in front of Derek’s face, without looking away from the old man. Derek shifted forward, bowing his head slightly until the nape of his neck and the leather was just under Stiles’s fingers. Stiles took the loose end of the belt in hand and pulled just enough that he could feel the pressure against Derek’s neck. Derek didn’t so much as twitch.

 

 The old man, however, grinned broadly. “I’d love to hear how you managed to tame the beast.” He held out his hand for Stiles to shake. “Gerard Argent. We weren’t expecting company but coming across survivors is always a welcome surprise, rare but welcome.”

 

 Stiles, grateful for the excuse to release the belt, even if it meant touching this loathsome man, shook his hand firmly. It didn’t take Derek’s sensitive senses to hear the lie in Gerard’s words, however. If they hadn’t known someone would be coming down the road, why else would they have laid out the spike strips? They wouldn’t have done them much good against the bone men, after all. No, they’d known they would be coming through and they wanted to stop them. Why, Stiles still wasn’t sure.

 

 “I’d be glad of some intelligent company,” Stiles agreed, hoping he was a more convincing liar than Gerard.

 

 The man escorted them to the large campfire they’d built, apparently confident enough to not have to worry about what might see the smoke rising into the air. He and Derek, wherever they’d built a fire had always been so careful to keep them small.  He wondered if these hunters knew the bone men were out there still, or if this were perhaps all a power show, a display to dictate that it didn’t matter what was drawn in by the fire.

 

 Stiles sat on the rickety deck chair Gerard gestured him toward, watching as the old man turned to grab another out of one of the trucks. He kept his eyes on the others as they retrieved supplies to apparently make a meal, attention focussed on every sharp object or potential weapon. He noticed that there was never a weapon completely out of reach and thought of his crossbow back in the _Camaro_.

 

 He supposed these men and women considered Derek a more deadly a weapon than any crossbow though. To them he was a thing, a blunt object to mould to their will or snuff out entirely. He scrubbed a hand over his face in a moment of weakness, his forehead a little damp with sweat that had nothing to do with the fire.

 

 When he blinked his eyes open again he saw Derek kneeling at his side with the posture and focus of an obedient dog. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed, nauseous. Derek’s eyes cut to him from where they’d been watching the activity of the campsite and Stiles only wished he could know for sure what was rushing through his mind. He couldn’t help but notice, however, that Derek had put himself just slightly between Stiles and the chair Gerard had drawn out for himself.

 

 “How did you come across your little pet, exactly?” Gerard asked as he lowered himself into a rickety old chair beside Stiles. He spoke with a voice full of casual confidence, concerning interest.

 

 “I encountered him back in the ass-end of nowhere a few years ago,” Stiles lied easily, aiming for nonchalance. “He was practically feral when I met him. He’d been alone for so long it wasn’t hard to win him over. Carrot and stick, or whatever.”

 

 Gerard’s eyes glimmered in a way that made Stiles’s stomach coil tight and shake. It had nothing to do with sickness at the lies coming out of his own mouth, or the entire derogatory situation and the way Derek just _took it_ like he was practiced in it. He swallowed back bile because this man was dangerous and Stiles didn’t think for one minute he was willing to do the things it would take to convince him. They needed to get out.

 

 “An omega doesn’t last long without a pack,” Gerard noted.

 

 Stiles shrugged. “Maybe he feels I’m his pack,” he said. But as he spoke he saw Derek shift slightly where he knelt at his feet and had to wonder.

 

 “Werewolves don’t make good pets, my boy,” Gerard said with a solemnity of an old man speaking to his naïve grandchild. “I’m sure he is a good deterrent to the wild beasts you’ve encountered so far, probably makes you feel safe. But he can’t be trusted.”

 

 Stiles stared straight into the man’s eyes and thought that he hadn’t hated something so much in a long time. It was startling how quickly the feeling had developed with just a few clipped sentences. It had risen up in him with such force that he couldn’t help but think it was probably a side-effect of elongated solitude. Bu he hated him nonetheless. In that moment, he hated him more than the alpha pack, dead and gone, more than the human drifters who’d roughed him up when he’d been trying to find a place to be safe years ago, after he’d first ‘lost’ his dad.

 

 He hated himself almost as much though, as he said, “I trust it about the same as I trust a loaded gun. But I know how to use it as well as I use a gun too and you wouldn’t believe how useful it can be if it’s properly motivated.” It took everything in him not to look at Derek, not to register the words coming out of his mouth. He folded his fingers together in his lap and leant forward slightly to cover up the fact that his hands were shaking.

 

 Gerard considered him for a moment. “You never said what your name was.”

 

 “Noah Gajos,” Stiles said without hesitation.

 

 “And might I ask where you were heading?”

 

 There Stiles did hesitate. He wanted to look to Derek for reassurance but knew he couldn’t, he also knew that he didn’t dare give away Cora or the settlement where his dad hopefully was but he had to say something, anything. _Now_.

 

 “There was…something back that way,” he murmured, moistening his dry lips and hoping that the subject matter excused his anxiety, the fact that he couldn’t sit still. “We had a good setup, back in _Salvada Forest_ , but something… It was chasing us for a while. So we’ve been going in a big circle, trying to shake them.”

 

 “Them?” Again, that quiet, gentle coaxing. It was a grandfatherly tone that Stiles didn’t buy for one second.

 

 “The bone men,” Stiles breathed, letting the very real fear he tried so hard to suffocate daily ebb into his voice.

 

 At that, Gerard sat back. Stiles couldn’t be certain but he thought he made some sort of hand gesture. A moment later, one of his men came forward, handing them both mugs of steaming coffee. Stiles barely refrained from groaning aloud with desire. He hadn’t had coffee in years. He took the stainless steel camping mug instinctively.

 

 “I don’t want to impose,” he began warily.

 

 “Nonsense,” Gerard said as the rest of his party took their seats around the fire. “You’ve been through a lot. Join us and rest for a while.”

 

 Stiles exhaled uneasily. “I must admit, I was beginning to think I was the only human left alive,” he said, not entirely a lie there. He _hadn’t_ expected to see anyone, not humans, not werewolves. He hadn’t thought anyone could have survived this long, even the idea of the settlement seemed impossible. “I thought I was alone.”

 

 Gerard reached out and squeezed his shoulder before taking a sip of his own mug. “You’re not alone, my boy. We have somewhat of a encampment of our own south of here. It’s a bit rustic. We’re kept busy with hauling water and working the land but we’re not doing too badly.”

 

 Stiles nodded, thumbs tracing longingly at the rim of the cup. He took a surreptitious glance at Derek, hoping it only looked as if he were keeping him in check. He _saw_ Derek’s nostrils flare slightly, sniffing deeply. A beat later, he gave an almost imperceptible nod that Stiles took as assurance that he couldn’t smell poison. Not wanting to offend their dangerous hosts, Stiles took a sip.

 

 “Man that’s good coffee,” he groaned aloud, both as a distraction, to support his own act but also because it _did_ taste like heaven, company notwithstanding. It was bitter, rich and perfect. So long, _so, so_ long.

 

 “It is good,” Gerard agreed. “We hadn’t had any ourselves for a long time, but we found some in an abandoned delivery truck not far over and it still seemed good.”

 

 Stiles nodded, lifting his cup in thanks before taking another sip. He felt guilty at how good it tasted, at the fact that Derek was still kneeling in the dirt next to him like a dog waiting for his next command. He drank another, not allowing himself to savour it. “So if you guys have a home, what are you doing out here?”

 

 Gerard looked serious then. “We have hunting parties, our most recent spotted what they thought were werewolves in the old nature reserve not far from here.”

 

 Stiles felt his stomach jolt and was sure Derek did the same. “The one forty miles north-west of _Caelmore_?” he asked. _Cora and Isaac_ , he thought, it _had_ to be. He only hoped his expression didn’t betray his eagerness. Something must’ve given him away, however, because Gerard didn’t answer, only watched him. His eyes strayed to Derek, who was absolutely motionless, scarcely blinking.

 

 “What did you say your little dog’s name was again?” Gerard asked curiously.

 

 Stiles’s fingers flexed around his cup. “He knows better than to talk.” With that he tipped back another few deep gulps of coffee. There were soft murmurings then, conversations continuing seemingly separate from his exchange with Gerard. Everyone seemed to be very aware of him though, very aware of Derek and his mind raced as he struggled to find a way out of this without either of them being shot or hacked to death.

 

 The longer he sat there the more he saw that stirred unease within him. Some of the makeshift weapons were stained with blood. There were skulls strapped to the grills of the trucks, wolf skulls, except for the one bearing a pair of deer’s antlers. The eyes of the men and women around him were just a little too wild, no light of civilisation there that he remembered from his last days with his dad and the survivors of _Beacon Hills_.

 

 Swallowing, he set his cup down and rose as casually as he could manage. “If you guys are bedding down here for the night, I hope you won’t think me rude for being too much of a coward for that.” He couldn’t help but notice that some of the others had risen at the same time, including Gerard. He tried to pretend he hadn’t seen and reached for the loose end of the belt still wrapped around Derek’s throat like some makeshift leash. It felt like acid in his hands but he didn’t let go. He couldn’t now.

 

 Just a bit more.  They just get to the car and away from these freaks. There wasn’t even any one thing he could point to, to explain the rush of panic he felt being among them. It was everything and he needed to get out now.

 

 “I’ve seen too many things out here in the dark to sleep comfortably. I’d like to try and get to the nearest town and find something with four walls between me and _them_.” It was only a partial lie, really. He and Derek slept in the _Camaro_ on the nights they couldn’t find a structure of some kind. It was starting to get chillier as autumn matured but even that aside, there was no way he could fall asleep out in the open, even with Derek at his back.

 

 A house, a building didn’t make him safe, not now, but he supposed old instincts died hard and it still felt safer than most. Even when he was a child and his parents had taken him camping, he’d had to crawl in between them to fall asleep without four walls around him.

 

 “So eager to leave the first human contact you’ve had in so long?” Gerard asked carefully.

 

 “Of course not,” Stiles replied, “I’m just eager to bed down somewhere I can close a door, with the bone men so close.” Again, not a lie, but he could feel himself getting flustered, frustrated and desperate. He inhaled steadily and tried to find his centre. “After you’ve cleared up the vermin I figured I join you when you passed through? I wouldn’t want to presume to stride into your home uninvited.”

 

 “Indeed, that kind of rudeness could get you shot.” Gerard smiled without amusement, then looked lingeringly at Derek. “But we’d be glad to welcome you once we’ve dealt with our problem. A trained dog could prove useful back home.”

 

 That off-hand, sinister statement haunted Stiles all the way back to the _Camaro_. He did his best not to walk too quickly, not to run even though his insides were screaming. He kept his cool, breathing steadily as he forced himself to casually open the passenger door of the _Camaro_ for Derek, as if he were a simple canine unable to do so himself. Even as he sat into the driver’s side, he stared blankly ahead, his heart thundering in his chest as he waited.

 

 For a long moment everything was still, everything was silent. He turned the key in the ignition. They weren’t going to move the spike strips, were they? They weren’t…

 

 “What are they saying?” he asked Derek quietly, trying to move his lips as little as possible, even though there was no way the hunters could see him this far in the failing light. But then, there was movement at the side of the settlement and one of the hunters waved a hand through like someone directing traffic.

 

 “Drive,” Derek said, sharp and low. Stiles wanted to slam his foot to the accelerator, wanted to speed away from this wretched place but he _felt_ Derek next to him, warm compared to the cool night they’d left outside the car. He breathed and slowly drove through.

 

 It wasn’t until they were a respectful distance away from the camp that he sped up, gradually. He could see them all gathered, watching their departure when he glanced in the rear view mirror. He kept waiting for some sort of explosive, some sort of projectile weapon to send them careening off the road like in the movies but as they rounded the corner out of sight, he pulled on the handbrake.

 

 “What are you–?” Derek’s words cut short as Stiles pushed out of the car. He braced his hand on the roof of the _Camaro_ to save himself from stumbling as he staggered onto the tarmac. He swallowed, trying to round the other side of the car. He felt Derek rather than saw him, his heart still thudding as if he’d run a marathon and when Derek tried to steady him he recoiled back from his touch.

 

 “Don’t!” he gasped. “Don’t just…oh my God how can you even stand to…?” He swallowed again because there was just so much saliva in his mouth at that moment. Raising his gaze, the first thing he saw was the leather still wrapped around Derek’s throat and he couldn’t stand it. He reached forward without thinking.

 

 It was the lack of reaction that struck him. Derek didn’t flinch, didn’t even twitch as Stiles touched the leather at his throat, the tame guard dog’s disguise. That trust, the way Derek’s eyes watched his face gave Stiles pause. Hoping his expression told Derek he was worthy of that trust, he curled his fingers around the buckle and carefully tugged it free with unsteady hands. His fingertips brushed at the hollow of Derek’s throat and Derek did shudder then, shifting slightly but Stiles was sure it wasn’t from fear or shock.

 

 Derek’s eyes were intense in the growing darkness. He was so close and Stiles’s hands were still shaking as they lowered, belt coiled loosely within them until Derek caught his wrists. A long moment stretched out between them. The echoes of the hunters’ presence were still thick in the air around them, the taster of the prejudice of what was left of the world, the danger. For all that though, Stiles could only see Derek’s eyes, his hard jaw and cheekbones, could only feel the pressure against his wrists, so hot against his cool skin as the darkness closed in.

 

 “You drive,” he breathed out first, breaking the spell. “I don’t…I can’t and anyway you should…” Derek’s grip on his wrists had loosened gradually as he spoke so that when Stiles gestured toward the car he scarcely felt him let go at all. Derek had had to sacrifice his pride to get them out of there, and he’d done it so readily that it worried Stiles, made him wonder about the prejudice he’d faced in his home town when werewolves had been exposed. But that also told him Derek needed to have some control back.

 

 Regardless, Stiles could scarcely move he was shaking still.

 

 When they climbed back into the car, Stiles tossed the belt in his hands into the footwell with disgust and they didn’t speak again. They didn’t stop either until well into complete darkness, long after Stiles’s rush of adrenaline had subsided.

 

 He’d wound the red string that had once illustrated his path across the country find a home round and round his fingers. He’d taken to toying with it, picking at the knots he created until the string frayed, wrapping it in patterns around each digit in what had become a nervous habit. Every now and then he thought Derek glanced over at the nervous movement of his fingers but he said nothing, not until the car started to slow in the middle of nowhere and Derek quietly confirmed that no one had followed them.

 

 The car drew to a stop at last, tucked into a small copse of trees off to the side, _just_ out of sight of the road yet easy to access if they needed to get away quickly. As the engine died, Stiles lowered his hands, vibrant red string now clutched in a ball in one hand. He stared blankly at the darkness outside the windscreen as the headlights were shut off.

 

 “I didn’t mean a word of what I said to them,” he murmured wretchedly.

 

 “I know.” Derek’s voice was quiet and without inflection. It didn’t appease Stiles’s guilt any.

 

 Turning his head, he braved a look at Derek’s face. That gave even less away. His brows were furrowed in his typical scowl but Stiles couldn’t read the thoughts behind them. “Do you think he believed me? Gerard?”

 

 “Not a chance.”

 

 Stiles nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He hadn’t thought so either but that didn’t stop a pang of unease cutting through his chest at Derek’s confirmation. “Are you okay?” he all-but whispered this time.

 

 Derek didn’t answer.

 

 

 They slept in the car that night and in the morning the odd tension was still there. The nature reserve that Gerard had mentioned was only a slight detour from the little town they’d been heading toward originally. In fact if they passed through the old mining town, they could come up to the reserve from the side, hopefully avoiding another encounter with the hunters altogether as they followed up on the potential lead themselves.

 

 It could have been a trap, of course, could have been Gerard feeding them false information but Stiles thought it was just too coincidental that he’d said _two_ werewolves. And what was more, if he wanted them dead outright, why hadn’t he just killed them right then and there in the camp?

 

 “You don’t know these people,” Derek said darkly as they loaded the little fuel and supplies they’d managed to scavenge from the little town of _Colliery_ into the _Camaro_. “Even before the alphas outed us to the world the hunters were ruthless. They claimed to operate by a code but they _didn’t_ , Stiles. It’s all a game to them. We’re just entertainment, do you get that? Cora’s probably not even out there, no werewolves are, it’s probably _us_ they’re after and they’re just drawing out this little game for sport.”

 

 Stiles flinched at the bitter sting to Derek’s tone and couldn’t bear it anymore. He slammed the boot on the car harder than necessary, ignoring Derek’s glare. “Listen, I told you last night, I just said what I thought would get us out of there, I didn’t mean any of it, okay?”

 

 Derek scoffed. “You know I can hear when you’re lying, right? When you’re telling the truth?” He let Stiles gape wordlessly at that, wade in the shock of the confirmation of something he’d only assumed up until then, before adding, “I know every word you said to those hunters last night was bullshit.”

 

 Stiles frowned. “So then why–?”

 

 “ _Why_?” Derek snapped, “why do you think? Because the Argents are the oldest hunting family on record and the most ruthless. Them being dead was probably the one upside to the fucking apocalypse and seeing them there, unchecked, freely running what’s left of the world like they own it is just…” He twisted his head slightly, jaw set as he braced himself against the roof of the car. He bowed his head as he gathered himself. His fingers curled on the _Camaro_ , clenching and unclenching again and again. When he spoke again, his voice was forcibly calm. “The Argents are practiced in lies, in deception. I couldn’t tell if he was lying about the other wolves. But if it isn’t bullshit, if they are out there, if it’s _Cora_ and Gerard finds her first…”

 

 The defensive tension in Stiles’s body loosened and he slowly rounded the car and laid his hand on Derek’s arm, without thinking, instinctively going for the tactile connection that they’d steadily formed in the last…had it really been almost two months?

 

 “That’s why we’re going to find them first, if they’re out there,” Stiles assured him softly.

 

 Derek shook his head. “She’ll have covered her tracks, she’s smart. If she’s survived this long–”

 

 “She’s smart and so are we. If Gerard wasn’t lying, if there are wolves out there, if it’s Cora, we’ll find her first.”

 

 “We’re smart, but Gerard is smarter,” Derek said, tone unyielding, dark with despair. “He’s a hunter.”

 

 “And you’re her alpha,” Stiles said, because he may not be a werewolf expert but he’d talked enough with Derek since they’d met to know that meant something. “You may not have been taught how to be an alpha like your mother but you’re still Cora’s alpha, if she’s out there. You can sense her on some level, right? That’s why you haven’t given up, even after all these dead ends, no matter how hopeless you feel, even if you’re too scared to hope. If anyone can find her, it’s you.”

 

 Whenever Stiles spoke about werewolves, whenever he expressed a confidence in Derek or a trust in his abilities, any kind of faith in what he was, Derek got that look in his eyes. It was a startled vulnerability that just made Stiles was to touch him, protect him from the world even though he knew Derek could defend himself just fine. But maybe, he thought, just maybe Stiles was perhaps better at defence in the way that Derek was lacking, emotional rather than physical.

 

 He was hardly an expert but he’d had his share of therapy, of support from his friends and his dad when he’d lost his mother. He was pretty sure he’d tried all the methods of coping, of finding hope when all hope was lost, of protecting himself from the way the mind could work against itself out of guilt or loneliness or loss.

 

 Derek had never had that support, that experience. He’d lost his family and the world had ended and there had been no time to recover, no time for Derek to help himself. He’d been forced to compartmentalise in order to survive. Perhaps that was why he liked to work in the medical facilities back at the settlement, why he had instinctively given everything to help Stiles. It was the pack mentality, or at least, the instinctive need Derek had to put the pack before himself.

 

 Stiles had no problem being the one to challenge that. He always had always liked challenging authority, or side-stepping it at least.

 

 “There was a little house on the far edge of the town that looked pretty secure. They had their own well right outside, if you wanted to bed down there for the night?” he suggested, because while it’d taken a long time for him to drift off last night, he didn’t think Derek had slept at all.

 

 Derek cut a glance to the little wilderness just beyond the town’s boundary in the distance, the very edge of the nature reserve, Stiles thought. “I think I can catch us something to eat.”

 

 Stiles wondered if that was code for Derek’s wolf needing a run but perhaps that was a rude thing to say to a werewolf. Instead, biting his tongue, he reached his hand across the roof for the keys. “I’ll park it up in the car port. They had some boxes out front that we can stack in front to keep it hidden at first glance at least. You can follow my path to the house and cover our tyre tracks?” It wouldn’t help in the long run, but if the hunters did follow them into the town, at least that’d hopefully give Derek a chance to hear them coming, give them some warning.

 

 Stiles still wasn’t sure if the bone men were following at all, or indeed, how they found their victims. He was pretty sure covering their tyre tracks wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if they were coming for them. He tried to push that possibility to the back of his mind.

 

  _One threat at a time,_ he told himself.

 

 He thought for a moment Derek was going to protest. While their partnership, their meting out of the tasks had been fairly equal, Derek still sometimes seemed to find it difficult to follow orders. The alpha in him, Stiles supposed. In the end though, he gave Stiles a wistful little look as he nodded and turned to walk away.

 

 “Hey, Derek?” he called, waiting for Derek to half-turn, to look at him before he continued. “You don’t have to hide, you know? If you wanted to…” He waved a hand in Derek’s general direction. Then he shrugged when Derek just raised his eyebrows at him. “I just mean it’s not something you have to be ashamed of, that’s all. If you needed to wolf-out once in a while”

 

 Canting his head slightly, Derek’s face seemed to twitch into an almost smile. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he mused.

 

 When Stiles got into the car, he jumped when Derek tossed his clothes through the open passenger-side window. Next he knew, a large black wolf was bolting up the abandoned street and out of sight. What did it say about him that the first thing his mind conjured up was not anything to do with the werewolf he’d seen or that Derek had listened to his declaration of acceptance, it was that when Derek returned, he’d be naked?

 

*

 

 There was enough pure, fresh water in the well to refill all the containers and have enough in the house to wash, drink and cook with. To his relief, when he arrived back, Derek prepared the rabbits he’d caught and Stiles cooked them. Derek washed out their sleeping bags and blankets, then hung them on an old fashioned washing rack hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen-living area. The bed upstairs had been a bit dusty but after a shake-out they had decided it would do for the night.

 

 The house was small, perhaps that was what had saved it from looting when the riots had started, but at least it was whole. It had only the one bedroom though and Stiles felt a bit awkward as he sat on the floor by the bed, not wanting to presume to sit on it and claim it for himself but not wanting to be the one to question it either. He was pretty sure if Derek could tell when he was lying, he’d be able to tell when Stiles got that little jolt at his proximity, which was happening more and more lately. It was still light outside but after their shitty night, they’d decided to sleep during the daylight and head out when it was dark, hopefully get the jump on the Argents who would likely not search he reserve at night.

 

 When Derek stepped into the bedroom, he paused at the sight of Stiles on the dusty floor and stared at him as he let the door fall shut behind him. “Getting too used to the floor now?” he asked with a raised brow.

 

 Stiles snorted, his free arm looped around his drawn up knees as he dragged the index finger of his other hand through the thick dust on the hardwood floor in front of him. There he’d absently written _Mieczyslaw_ and below it, at a forty-five degree angle _Noah_ , then, on the mirroring side beneath his name _Claudia_ , the three names arranged in a triangle without the sides drawn out. He was about to dash his hand through it when he realised that Derek was moving toward him and had already seen it.

 

 He cleared his throat, sitting up a little self-consciously and wiping off his dusty finger on the leg of his track suit bottoms. They weren’t as uncomfortable to sleep in as jeans and would still allow him a quick getaway if need be. As he reached Stiles’s side, Derek cocked his head to read the names, before lowering himself to his haunches beside him. Stiles watched as Derek reached forward to drawl a triple-armed swirl between the tree names, the same symbol Stiles had seen tattooed between Derek’s shoulder blades. Then, without speaking, Derek drew another one beside it.

 

 “Who are the points of your celtic thingy?” Stiles asked softly, when Derek didn’t add names to his own.

 

 Derek gave a weak smile. “It’s a triskele,” he said, in lieu of answering, before glancing back at the bed. It was big enough and they had laid together closer than that but still, the shared sheets implied an intimacy they hadn’t experienced before, even with the sun streaming in through the windows. The mattress had felt so soft, so luxurious when he’d tested it earlier though. Stiles knew he’d never be able to stand it if Derek was suffering on the couch downstairs while he was up here, or vice versa. It made no sense for one of them to be uncomfortable.

 

 “I know, what you said earlier,” Derek began uncertainly. “That I didn’t have to hide my other shape, and I know this is a lot more than just seeing it but…” He worked his jaw a moment as he clearly struggled for the right words, even after all this time, he still wasn’t particularly good at articulating himself. Stiles wondered if he’d always been a quiet man or if it was being ostracised from their home town, then losing his family that’d made him that way.

 

 “I thought you’d be more comfortable if I was a wolf while we shared the bed.”

 

 Stiles blinked. “You…what?”

 

 Derek hesitated. He usually wore this façade of pissed indifference but now and again this uncertainty slipped through, a ghost of the lost boy he’d probably been years ago. He was just awful with words. Stiles was too though, he supposed, just in different ways. At Stiles’s surprise though, Derek visibly stiffened.

 

 “I just thought–” he began sharply but Stiles cut him off.

 

 “No, no it’s cool, dude, totally I just uhh…” In truth, it was perhaps better that he share the sheets with the wolf, rather than a man that made his heart thud treacherously. The being inside would be the same of course but it’d be a lot easier to ignore his feelings if Derek looked like an animal. He bit the inside of his mouth, wondering if perhaps Derek thought he was afraid of the wolf? He could likely sense Stiles’s discomfort, but that didn’t mean he knew the source of it. “Whatever makes you comfortable, your call,” Stiles added, just in case he was in any doubt.

 

 Stiles climbed onto the bed then, if only for the opportunity to prove he was amenable to whatever Derek decided and for the chance to hide his own awkwardness. He still couldn’t quite dismiss the little part of him that both longed for and dreaded Derek sliding in beside him looking the way he did now. The feeling only intensified when Derek turned away from the bed and pulled his shirt off, exposing the lines of his toned back and muscles in his arms and shoulders.

 

 Stiles’s throat felt dry and he hastily dusted off the pillow on his side in an attempt to divert his eyes. Then he realised Derek had frozen like that, turned away, facing the wall in a silent struggle.

 

 “Derek?” Stiles asked uncertainly.

 

 “It wasn’t that I believed a word you said to those hunters was true,” Derek murmured in response. He seemed to wrestle with his words, with his pride before he added, “I guess I thought you might believe them a little.”

 

 Stiles frowned. “What, like I’d think after meeting them that you were some sort of monster?”

 

 Derek didn’t turn, didn’t move and Stiles knew that was exactly it. He stared at Derek in disbelief and thought back through the little Derek had shared with him about having their entire hometown turn against them. He knew there had been violence, there had been degradation similar to the display they’d put on for Gerard Argent. It had ultimately resulted in a young Derek losing his home and a large part of his family.

 

 Stiles couldn’t even imagine it, being targeted, humiliated and chased away like unwanted squatters or even slaughtered just because he was, what, different?

 

 The world had gone bat-shit crazy even before the bone men had surfaced and destroyed them all.

 

 Stiles shifted on his knees on the bed and shifted forward only to hesitate with his arm outstretched, catching himself at the last minute. Funny, how being faced with ‘his own kind’ had made panic bloom in his chest like a violent bruise but reaching out to touch Derek was almost second nature. The hesitation was brief, it had nothing to do with what or who Derek was and everything to the overwhelming connection Stiles felt for him. The pause was gone as swiftly as a breath on the wind and his fingers closed slowly around Derek’s shoulder.

 

 Derek’s head twisted to the side and Stiles swallowed as those pale green eyes studied him. They were so close, shining in the warm light from outside. Around them, the house creaked quietly. It was cold outside but suddenly, there with Derek, it was a little too warm.

 

 “I warn you, I’m used to sleeping in the middle of the bed,” he offered and it was weak as far as their usual banter went, but Derek’s skin was so warm and firm and smooth under Stiles’s skin and his heart was racing.

 

 Derek’s eyebrows twitched, as if uncertain of something but when Stiles edged back and slid under the sheets on his side of the bed, he seemed to come to a decision. Derek crouched down and Stiles had a split second to wonder if he was just taking his jeans off to sleep naked. But as he watched the downward movement continued, Derek’s limbs stretching seamlessly, elongating and twisting with unreal, organic snapping sounds. The noises were punctuated with a little grunt from behind a mouthful of fangs and then a large black wolf was standing beside the bed.

 

 Stiles’s eyes went wide, he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t seen Derek like this up close, at least not when he’d had time to truly look. He was immense. Bigger than any dog or wolf Stiles had ever seen and jet black with lighter fur around his eyes, eyes that glowed brilliant scarlet in the soft ethereal light streaming into the room.

 

 Stiles found himself grateful that the previous owner of the house had lived in comfort rather than luxury. The house was small but the bed was large and comfortable, he only hoped it’d be able to support Derek’s weight. Derek hadn’t moved to climb onto the bed though. He seemed to be waiting, gauging whether Stiles was truly alright in such close proximity to his wolf.

 

 In the end the tension, the uncertainty clear even on the animalistic features was too much and Stiles couldn’t stand it. He reached over and patted the empty side of the bed. “C’mon then, big guy.”

 

 Derek growled but Stiles thought it was with the same fond exasperation that punctuated Derek’s words when he used his human mouth, since he climbed up on the bed regardless. The mattress dipped but the bed held steady as Derek settled, taking up his entire side, head resting on his paws on the pillows, right next to Stiles’s face.

 

 It wasn’t as awkward, didn’t fill Stiles with the same ripple of uncomfortable pleasure, but the intimacy of their proximity hadn’t lessened any. It was still Derek. He was still Stiles, too, which was why he couldn’t stop his fingers from flexing where they lay, dangerously close to Derek’s side.

 

 Derek’s eyes flew open.

 

 It occurred to Stiles that he was crossing some line, one that would change everything and yet he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t hold back. “Can I?”

 

 Derek stared at him for a long moment, before huffing as if he didn’t care either way. He didn’t close his eyes though, didn’t tear his gaze from Stiles’s face even as Stiles’s own focus drifted down to where his long fingers sank into the soft fur along Derek’s side. Derek tensed and Stiles glanced back up briefly but didn’t draw his hand away.

 

 His breath caught in his chest, suddenly too tight, his skin tingling where they touched. Derek wasn’t even wearing his human shape but it felt so good to touch someone, to feel close. He felt light-headed even laying down.

 

 Derek had pretended he didn’t care one way or another but Stiles knew, this was everything right then, for both of them. Their gazes held for a beat longer, then Stiles let his fingers curl deeper into obsidian fur, spread up to stroke over Derek’s neck. Derek could’ve ripped his arm clean off before he could even blink, instead he just seemed to melt into the mattress, relax in a way Stiles had _never_ felt him relax since they’d met.

 

 It was like some final barrier had crumbled around them and there was nothing left to drive him into tension. Derek lay calmly beside him, eyes closed. Stiles let his hand drift in infinitesimal, gentle caresses.

 

 Perhaps it hadn’t just been that Derek had wanted to spare Stiles any awkwardness in sharing a bed with each other. Stiles realised as the rush of contact and companionship filled him with comfort, made him touch-drunk, that no one had probably touched Derek in this form, had accepted him in this form in so long. Perhaps deep down, even unconsciously, Derek had wanted to see if he could trust Stiles to see him like this and still accept him.

 

 Stiles could only hope to be deserving of that kind of faith.

 

 “You know,” Stiles murmured, voice husky with exhaustion and repose. “I’m equal parts disappointed and relieved you didn’t go all _‘Wolf Man’_ on me on the full moon. Was none of what the movies said true?”

 

 Derek snorted without opening his eyes.

 

 Stiles smirked sleepily. “Yeah, the wolf’s bane, I guess. And the bite, to some extent.” Even the thoughts that came associated with the latter couldn’t touch him just then, sprawled there serene and safe, so warm all the way to his toes. His eyes fluttered shut. “When we get home, we’ll rewrite all the history books, buddy, set the records straight.”

 

 Derek gave no response.

 

 Stiles drifted.

 

*

 

 Stiles jerked awake to the feeling that something was wrong. His eyes flew open and before he could reach out for Derek, before he could so much as draw breath, a hand clapped over his mouth, stifling any sound he could make. Stiles choked on a smothered cry and stared straight up into Derek’s human eyes. His heart pounded as slowly, Derek’s hand drew back to press a single finger across his own lips, just inches from Stiles’s own, a clear plea for silence.

 

  _‘Someone is in the house,’_ Derek mouthed clearly.

 

Stiles’s blood ran cold.

 

  _Someone_ , Derek had mouthed, not something. The hunters had followed them.

 

 


	5. Pandemonium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please bear in mind that as an AU there have been slight changes and also expansion on some aspects of canon. Also I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the feedback I've had so far, I cannot express how much every comment and kudos means.

Chapter Five

**Pandemonium**

 Stiles’s eyes flew to the door, wild and frantic with rising panic. When they shot back to Derek’s face again, those warm, oddly soft fingertips splayed over his lips imploringly, a silent reminder how pivotal his silence was. Stiles strained to hear something, anything but could only hear the blood thudding in his ears.

 

 Distantly at the back of his mind, beyond his struggle to develop a plan of defence, he registered that Derek was utterly naked as he loomed over him. He didn’t have time to process that fact.

 

  _‘Stay,’_ Derek mouthed, jerking his finger in a downward motion to indicate the bed.

 

 Stiles scowled and sat up as Derek drew back. He watched as Derek seemed to _melt_ into a crouch. He slid his legs to the side of the bed in an abortive attempt to follow.

 

 Derek’s chin jerked up and his eyes flared red in warning. Then his limbs twisted, morphing into the black creature that should’ve been terrifying, would have likely been to anyone else. The noise of shifting cartilage and bone too loud in the silence, then Derek was gone, paws silent on the dusty floorboards.

 

 Swearing internally, Stiles stared at the ground for a moment, putting all his weight on his arms as he cautiously levered himself onto his toes. He paused, standing still for a fleeting beat, before easing his footsteps toward the door on his toes, slow and steady, silent.

 

 The house was quiet, deathly quiet and filled with an eerie, blood-red glow from the setting sun outside. He swallowed, focussing hard on keeping his breathing even and quiet, even as his heartbeat pounded frantically in his chest. Slowly, gently his toes carried him, over the threshold onto the unused floorboards of the hall beyond the bedroom.

 

 There was a window behind him, casting his own shadow long and ominous along the landing and his stomach jerked at the sight of it, even though he knew it was his own. He hopped carefully on his toes closer to the wall, keeping his back flat there and making his shadow a little less obvious.

 

 There was only one bedroom and bathroom up there, and the bathroom door was ajar. He couldn’t remember if they had left it ajar before coming to bed. Derek had been in there last, hadn’t he? Even though he didn’t think Derek could’ve missed anyone hiding there, he had to be sure. Slowly, slowly he edged toward the door, listening through the crack.

 

 He held his breath, feeling a swell in that same inherent wrongness in his bones that had filled him the second he’d awoken, a buzzing hair-prickling tickle that set his teeth on edge. Like his ‘luck’ he tried not to rely on it, merely dubbed it a gut feeling. The initial burst of it he’d experienced when he’d first met Derek had faded into a subtle little hum long ago, settled into a buzz of excitement rather than this rush of dread he felt now. It wasn’t reliable, he knew that, but he had no other option than to trust it now as he carefully edged the door open.

 

 It swung open noiselessly, thank god and Stiles jerked, slamming a hand to his mouth at the sight of his own reflection in the mirror, stifling the initial cry of surprise that wanted to leap out of his throat. Heart still pounding, he jerked his head to the side, seeing that the bath-shower was empty, with no other space to hide in the little room.

 

 His gaze travelled back round just in time to catch the dark reflection in the mirror. He didn’t have time to scream. All he saw were wild eyes and a silver bat swinging for his head. He ducked, just at the last second, hearing the metal _swooping_ passed his ear, cutting the air. The man was huge and dark but Stiles was faster. He ducked under the sweeping blow and dragged the man to the floor.

 

 There was a thud, a scuffle but at the same time there was the sound of glass breaking below. Whether it was a purposeful act on Derek’s behalf to cover any sound he was making, the noise of an intruder or another not-so silent battle below, he didn’t have time to think. He tried to grab the bat. He locked both hands on it but the man below him, now pinned beneath his weight was far stronger.

 

 He pressed all his weight on the bat, getting it lodged under the man’s chin, both of them silent, both of them wary of the other’s companions. Stiles grunted from behind his teeth as he bore down but it wasn’t enough. He felt desperation surge and he pushed all his weight on one hand at the centre of the bat, raising his right hand and bringing it down hard against the man’s face. Pain bloomed in his knuckles but he didn’t stop, didn’t dare, didn’t know what else to do but hit him again and again and again, until at last he felt the resistance behind the bat fall. He tugged it free of his adversary’s limp grip and stood back, just one little hop of a step that was pretty much silent in the once again deafening quiet.

 

 His breathing felt too loud, his heart too rapid in the quiet house and his eyes darted down the hall but the stairway was empty.

 

 Where was Derek? What had that noise been? How many of them were there?

 

 He glanced down at the unconscious man, thought of his crossbow in the _Camaro_ outside and his stupidity at leaving it there, letting himself get comfortable and rely on Derek’s abilities in spite of his insistence that they be equal. He hadn’t even realised he’d done it, it had been a subconscious act of trust in Derek. Stupid too, though not because Derek wasn’t worthy of that trust, but because even Derek’s abilities weren’t infallible, especially given what they were facing.

 

 Where were his survival instincts now? It was like the spark of intuition in him, whatever had helped him survive this long had fallen into repose in the safety of Derek’s presence.

 

 He stood, momentarily lost for what to do in the centre of silent panic because of that mistake. He couldn’t kill this man silently with the bat and even if he could, his stomach churned. If he’d have hit him in the cusp of the struggle for his life it would’ve felt different to killing him now. There was a difference between defending his life and beating an unconscious man to death, even now at the end of the world.

 

 Swallowing, he stood uncertainly over him for a long time, before he heard the soft sound of movement from downstairs. Edging back to the wall again, Stiles reminded himself that at that moment, the real danger lurked below.

 

 Creeping to the top of the stairs he felt the floorboard give, just enough to warn him of the oncoming creak and he froze, the sound echoing low but worryingly throughout the house. Stiles stifled a gasp with a hand over his mouth, crouching down low to the ground against the banister. He waited.

 

 After a beat, Stiles swore he caught the sound of movement from below, the barest whisper of fabric perhaps as someone moved. He waited, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. Then he _definitely_ heard the lowest stair creak. He held his breath. He could make for the bedroom but if the person below had a gun…

 

 A rumbling growl sounded from below, further afield than the bottom of the stairs. The ground floor was more spacious than the upper, generous and sprawling, he couldn’t be sure but he thought it was in the living area, just to the right of the stairs. How had the intruders gotten in so quietly?

 

 The steps on the lowest steps moved away and he chanced a glance over his shoulder to the floor below, watching as a man with the modified shovel from Gerard’s camp kept to the wall as he headed toward the kitchen. Derek had made the noise on purpose, drawn them away from Stiles at the sound of his misstep that had nearly given him away.

 

 How many of them were in the house? Where were they? If Derek was taking the stealth approach, it could only be because the odds were not in their favour.

 

 He waited. A minute passed, a long, eternal moment and then he moved, not able to bear it. He kept his weight on the edges of the steps, avoiding the creaking centre of each and when he reached the bottom of the stairs he saw that the door leading down to the basement was ajar.

 

 There were long windows in the basement, narrow but still accessible. They had secured them but with the door shut, they would’ve been easy to compromise without Stiles hearing. Not Derek though. These hunters may have been the best, according to Derek, but they still didn’t know exactly what a wolf was capable of as intimately as Stiles did.

 

 Movement caught the corner of his eye and his head jerked to the side. It took everything in him not to gasp or cry out at the sight of the man standing in the doorway to the living room. He had his back to Stiles, the shovel poised as he evidently made a cautious search of the living room, he too not wanting to make a sound and be the first to give himself away to the wolf lurking within.

 

 It occurred to Stiles to wonder how Derek had managed to stay hidden in such a large shape. Perhaps he was shifting between the two, man and wolf when the man moved?

 

 The hunter stepped into the room, weapon poised.

 

 Stiles knew a moment of hesitation, of wondering if he could use the bat to knock him out without making a noise. From the side of the doorway Derek lunged, as if from nowhere. Stiles covered his mouth to stifle the cry of shock, jerking against the wall. Derek’s hand flew out, covering the man’s mouth and Stiles watched as, even from behind, he saw Derek swipe his claws across the man’s throat.

 

 It all happened within seconds. The spray of blood painted the walls and Derek dipped, lowering the man’s body to the ground silently. Stiles had slid to the floor from the shock of Derek’s appearance and he watched him now, eyes wide, heart frantic, inappropriate awe making him freeze.

 

 Derek’s eyes were the crimson of the blood dripping from his claws and as he turned, he held Stiles’s gaze from the doorway. There was a moment, a fleeting connection where Stiles saw for the first time the true power Derek held, how dangerous he could be and yet he was not afraid. Not of the man, not of the wolf. Not of Derek. He had seen what the rest of his own ignorant species had been scared of, and he knew Derek would never hurt him.

 

 Derek, however, hesitated, clearly wondering at Stiles seeing him like this, at his ‘worst’.

 

 Everything that followed happened in seconds, so much that Stiles scarcely processed any of it, only reacted.

 

 Beside Stiles, the door to the garage opened and two men faltered at the sight of Derek. Evidently missing Stiles where he sat on the floor at the base of the wall, they flew forward. Derek side-swiped one with a powerful arm, sending him crashing into the stone cold fireplace in the living area. He caught the throat of the other and lifted him bodily from the ground, leaving his feet scrabbling for purchase. The man swung wildly with the metal pipe in his hand, the knife fixed to the end slicing through Derek’s free arm and sending blood spraying through the air.

 

 “No!” Stiles cried out, in that moment forgetting just how much damage a wolf could take because this was _Derek._ Derek who snarled and slammed the dangling man into the wall so hard the plaster exploded through the other side. Even as the last of the man’s struggles died, Stiles surged up at the sight of the man appearing behind Derek, likely from the kitchen that the living area lead into. He reached for the fallen pipe just as Stiles screamed. “Derek!”

 

 Derek dropped the now unconscious man in his grasp. The pipe-wielding adversary struck before he’d fully turned and plunged the pipe through Derek’s chest. A burst of thick blood burst from Derek’s mouth and his body jerked, werewolf or not, choking even as he whirled and lunged. The hunter side-stepped at an odd angle. Stiles darted to the doorway, metal bat in hand, just in time to see Derek fly across the living space and through the kitchen doorway after the hunter, right into the trap the hunter had dodged.

 

 The steel-jawed trap snapped shut around Derek’s leg and he roared, a bone-chilling howl that was all teeth and pain as the walls trembled with the volume of it. Stiles moved. The man had snatched a neglected kitchen knife out of the block on the counter and was moving, diving for Derek’s head.

 

 Stiles didn’t hesitate. “Hey!” He yelled, locking eyes with the assailant for the briefest of moments as he swung. The metal connected with a sick _thwack_ and the pipe man crumpled like his legs had been swiped from under him, even though it was his skull that had taken the brunt of Stiles’s blow. He fell to the floor, unmistakeably dead without Stiles even watching him hit the tile.

 

 Stiles went to Derek, hands shaking as he dropped to his side and saw the blood, saw the carnage, saw _bone_ and his stomach lurched. Derek was trying to pry the trap open with his fingers around the teeth in desperation, growling _“they’re coming, Stiles, they’re coming!”_

Steeling himself, Stiles inhaled even as the crisis escalated. His dad’s face swam through his mind. He recalled the time he’d been riding along in the cruiser as his dad headed home from an evening shift and they’d come across a hiker who’d gotten caught in an illegal poacher’s trap in the preserve. They’d responded first to the sounds of screams and Stiles had watched, even after he’d been told to stay in the car as his dad read the instructions on the side. The instructions on these were faded, even beneath the oozing blood. His vision swam, for a moment he thought he couldn’t breathe much less read but he had to, he _had_ to.

 

 “Derek,” he began, trying to get him to still. He needed him to be still. But Derek couldn’t get a grip round the teeth of the steel-jaw trap.

 

 “There’s more of them,” Derek gasped out, pipe still in his chest, face pale beneath crimson, eyes blown wide and words slurred with effort. How much could a werewolf heal from?

 

 Stiles stared at him with wide eyes. His shaking hands hovered midair before making the decision. The pipe first, then the trap. He gripped Derek’s shoulder at the same time as he wrapped his fingers, slow, hesitant, purposeful round the pipe. It was hot and wet with Derek’s blood and he gagged, stared at the place it vanished into his chest and wondered if he could possibly make it hurt more by touching it when Derek’s hand flailed clumsily midair, all-but falling against his own shoulder. Bloody fingers gripped his shirt, his shoulder too tightly and Stiles grit his teeth but he understood. Derek was afraid. So was Stiles.

 

 “Stay with me, buddy,” he murmured urgently, “I’m gonna get you out of here, alright?” But his fingers slipped on the blood and he cursed as all he did was jerk the metal in the gaping wound. “Shit,” he cursed. “Sorry, sorry, here, let me…” He wrapped his loose plaid outer shirt around one hand and then grasped the metal again.

 

 Derek’s fingers, blunt and clawless now dug into his shoulder until it hurt.

 

 Derek shook his head. “Coming,” he choked out, “more of them. Can’t protect you. Go. _Go_!”

 

 Stiles just grit his teeth, bracing himself against Derek’s shoulder and pulling with all his strength. The pipe slid free with a sickening, organic noise and fell to the floor, the sharp point of the crudely attached knife snapping off as it did so, likely weakened from the impact of being driven through flesh and bone.

 

 Derek jerked and choked, his body shook with spasms, gripping at Stiles as his head bowed and blood wept from his wordlessly gasping lips.

 

  _“Go_ ,” he grunted, the word barely recognisable. “Why won’t you go?”

 

 “Will you heal?” Stiles asked as he steadied Derek, wondering at the possibilities of werewolf healing. All he knew was he needed to get Derek free of the trap and he needed to get them out of there, now. Derek swayed a little, trying to steady himself on Stiles’s shoulder but his expression was dazed. “ _Derek_ ,” Stiles demanded. “Will you heal? Are you dying?”

 

 Derek closed his eyes, a ripple of _something_ coming over his face, changing it just for a moment. It was gone as soon as Stiles saw it though, a glimmer of the wolf trying to come to the forefront, perhaps, a semi-transformation, as if it were Derek’s body trying to heal itself.

 

 “They’re coming,” he gasped out, voice rough and shaken, “Go. _Go_!”

 

 Stiles bit his lip, glancing at the doorway behind him, at the back door they’d barricaded with the modest fridge-freezer. He reached for the trap, double-checking the instruction label, _just_ visible behind the corrosion of time and blood. He pulled the spring-lever, twisting the mechanism as carefully as he could to part the jaws of the trap. He let his vision blur as he watched Derek pull his leg free, intentionally avoiding looking at the mess of flesh that resulted from the trap as he shoved it aside out of the way and scrambled for the dish towel hanging over the kitchen island.

 

 “No,” Derek grunted, “don’t bother. It’ll heal.” Despite his words, he winced as he pushed up, trying to lever himself to his feet.

 

 Stiles glanced to the door again. “Will you heal faster if you change?”

 

 Derek set his jaw, the pain seeming to make a surge over his senses as his leg had been freed. Briefly, Stiles wondered if his leg had tried to heal around the trap, wondered if the hunters thought wolves couldn’t feel pain like they did. But it didn’t matter that Derek could heal, he still felt the pain, still lost himself to agony the same way Stiles would have.

 

 “Hey,” he said, squeezing Derek’s shoulder again, starting at the bright red stains his fingers smeared over Derek’s shoulder. He swallowed, breathing hard. “Stay with me, big guy.”

 

 Derek grit his teeth and turned onto his hands and knees, a grunt of pain morphing into an animalistic growl as his body shuddered and writhed with the change. The black wolf’s high-pitched whine pierced the air and his body jerked as his still bloody back leg made contact with the kitchen tiles, just as another hunter darted into view. He descended. No sound even built in Stiles’s lungs. He didn’t think, he reacted. He dove for the broken off knife-point that had been the tip of the pipe driven into Derek’s chest, felt it sharp in his fingers but didn’t register the pain. He threw his arm up at the same time as the man was on him and slammed the tip into the man’s neck.

 

 Stiles jerked at the sound it made, at the sound the hunter made and the wide eyes so close to his face. He scrambled back, releasing the weapon, leaving it embedded in his enemy’s flesh and watching with horror in his eyes as the men fell lifeless to the floor. The kitchen island was at Stiles’s back and so he had nowhere to run when a woman stepped into view, clutching a crossbow a lot like the one Stiles had left in the _Camaro._

Distantly, as the roar of panic rang shrill and piercing in his ears, Stiles wondered if the crossbow he’d found long ago had actually belonged to a fallen hunter. He supposed he’d never know.

 

 “Gerard wants the dog,” the woman said with an air of disinterest as she looked down at her felled comrade, “only the dog.”

 

 Stiles jerked from his reverie as Derek staggered closer. His defensive stance was belied by his back leg still hanging at an awkward angle, his jowls drawn back in a fanged snarl and red eyes blazing. The woman raised the crossbow. Stiles didn’t draw breath, he didn’t close his eyes to prepare for the impact. There was no time. The bow, not as cared for as his own, gave a telling grind as the woman pulled the trigger. The bolt whistled as it tore through the air. Stiles saw nothing, only the woman, only her eyes lined by time and vacant with dispassion. The bolt never struck.

 

 Derek stood there, human again, clothed in only sweat and blood with the bolt clasped in his hand. His body was half-turned to Stiles, every muscle in his back tense and his jaw set as if his rage were barely contained.

 

 Stiles watched the lines of his arm, watched him pause for just a second, his head canted a fraction in Stiles’s direction. Stiles who stared in awe at the man who’d just snatched an arrow out of midair with a still healing leg and like…like it was nothing, like it was normal, like it was instinct. All Stiles could think was _holy shit._

 The woman scrambled in a blind panic at the sight of her intercepted shot, trying to put another bolt to the bow.

 

 Acting on instinct himself, Stiles reached for something, anything as a weapon but then Derek moved. He threw the bolt and Stiles jerked as if it’d struck _him_ when it pierced the woman’s chest, downing her like a stalk of felled wheat with an unforgiving thud. Derek lunged and Stiles flinched at the sudden silence as Derek swiped the life from the hunter’s throat, leaving her as motionless as the others who had tried to kill them.

 

 Slowly, Derek turned, claws extended and dripping blood, hunter’s blood, _human_ blood onto the floor of the kitchen they’d eaten in together only a few hours before, in the building they’d shared the same bed in. He faced Stiles with a stoic mask that couldn’t hide the vulnerability in his eyes, the uncertainty. It felt as if he were bracing himself for Stiles’s reaction, waiting for the explosion. It was the carnage his power was capable of laid bare for Stiles to see.

 

 There may have been blood on his hands but all Stiles could think was that Derek had fought at his side, had protected him, had urged Stiles to run to keep him safe and he’d been amazing.

 

 For a long moment Stiles could only survey him, tongue locked from the shock and the adrenaline rushing up like a tidal wave. Among the chaos of that emotion, however, Stiles felt a rush of something a lot like relief that Derek was still standing before him, whole albeit bloody and exposed, all of him for Stiles to see, the very worst part and Stiles still wasn’t afraid.

 

 “Are you ok?” Stiles asked, voice rough and shaky. He felt cold sweat prickle across his skin. At his words, however, Derek’s face softened and he seemed to consider that permission to cross the invisible barrier between them and approach Stiles. He stopped just in front of him, surveying him for damage. He reached for Stiles then with the hand not covered in blood, and when Stiles didn’t flinch at the touch, lifted his hand to consider his knuckles, the cuts on his fingers where he’d gripped the blade he’d plunged into the hunter’s neck.

 

 “There’s a guy,” Stiles managed, licking his dry lips, tasting the bead of sweat just above them. “Upstairs, I hit him, tried to be quiet but he wasn’t dead when I–”

 

 “He ran, while we were fighting the others, I heard him. Just before the woman shot the crossbow,” Derek said, brows furrowing as he traced the pad of his thumb just above the broken skin on Stiles’s hand. “We need to get moving, he’s probably gone to get others, but we should clean this.”

 

 Stiles only nodded, falling into uncharacteristic silence, feeling as if he were fading in and out of coherency as Derek guided him to the bathroom on the ground floor. Stiles stared at his pale reflection in the mirror, haunted by the sight but unable to look away. He felt detached from reality the entire time Derek cleaned himself of blood in water from the shower that must’ve been cold but didn’t stop him. He could hear the urgent scrubbing, the little huffs of breath that signified how chilled the water was but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the mirror.

 

 He jumped out of his skin when he felt a touch to his arm only to find Derek beside him, hair wet but the rest of him hastily dried. He had his jeans pulled up as a measure of modesty but his belt hung loose in the loops around his hips. He halted at Stiles’s alarm, eyes searching him for signs that the proximity they’d grown accustomed to over the weeks wasn’t welcome, was no longer trusted.

 

 Shaking his head, Stiles exhaled unevenly. “Sorry, I’m not…” _I’m not afraid_ , is what he wanted to say but his head still felt jumbled, his thoughts too fast to grasp.

 

 “You’re shaking.” Derek’s voice was low and soft, like it always was, like there wasn’t a string of bodies spread through the house, like there wasn’t more on the way to finish the job their comrades had failed. It was the voice that’d kept Stiles company when his mind had gotten too much, the voice he trusted.

 

 Stiles shook his head again. “It’s shock, or adrenaline, maybe both.” Familiar, unfortunately, though it’d been years he’d felt it.

 

 Derek filled the sink with cold water, diluting some of the antiseptic fluid from their medical kit within. When Derek reached out this time, he didn’t look at Stiles’s face, he kept his eyes trained on Stiles’s as he slowly wrapped his fingers around Stiles’s wrist, as if wanting to give him every opportunity to pull away. He guided Stiles’s palm flat into the water and Stiles hissed at the sharp sting.

 

 At the sound, Derek lifted his head to catch his gaze before turning back to the broken, submerged skin, grabbing a sealed wipe from the kit and dabbing gently. The careful but capable touches, the way the thumb of Derek’s other hand, the one gently gripping Stiles’s forearm rubbed soothingly at his skin was such a stark contrast to the carnage of what had just happened. Derek was capable of terrible things but so were most humans. Derek hadn’t changed, what had just happened hadn’t changed the man Stiles had gotten to know. It didn’t change the fact that under his barely there touch Stiles felt more grounded than he had since he last saw his dad.

 

 “How did the hunters manage to get anywhere near us without you hearing?” Stiles asked when he felt coherent enough to trust his voice.

 

 Derek glanced up briefly before focussing on Stiles’s split skin with furrowed brows.

 

 “They have centuries of practice in hunting us, practices even my mother didn’t understand fully. They know how to move silently if they’re careful, mask their scents. I only heard them in the house at all because I heard them break the windows in the basement. Only two came in at first, the rest were meant to down us if we fled from the initial ambush.”

 

 Stiles nodded, wincing as Derek gingerly dried his hand and wrapped his knuckles in crisp white bandages. He watched the movements of Derek’s fingers, strong but smooth and soft. Warm. When there were band-aids on his fingers and his split knuckles were carefully bound, Stiles flexed them a few times to test the sting. He grimaced.

 

 “Stiles,” Derek began, and just by the tone Stiles guessed what he was about to say.

 

 “I’m not afraid of you,” Stiles breathed. Derek looked startled, as if the level of sincerity in Stiles’s words were something he had measured in that moment and found far surpassed his expectations. “I’m scared out of my mind of…of _everything_ but not you, okay? Not…not you.”

 

 Their eyes locked. The setting sun streamed in through the window and the glare of its reflection off the mirror made everything feel like something out of a dream, soft and unfocussed. Stiles chewed the inside of his lip and saw Derek’s gaze follow the gesture, the little twist of his mouth his father had always scolded him for. Stiles gave a little, low laugh, shaking his head as his legs gave out. At that moment, he felt two hands grasp his biceps and together, he and Derek sank to the cold bathroom floor.

 

 Stiles’s body hunched forward, slumped over Derek’s partially drawn up knees and his forehead pressed against Derek’s chest. For a long moment Derek seemed frozen, for all their tactile relationship, he was uncertain what to do, how to react to the closeness. Then, his arm curved around Stiles’s shoulder in an almost protective gesture. For all the danger that they were still in, they didn’t rush to move but fell into a fugue state, both of their bodies shattered with the absence of adrenaline.

 

 What had just happened had been ugly but necessary. Stiles would do it all again exactly the same if it would save his life or Derek’s but even so it was still all too much. For both of them.

 

 Derek’s arm didn’t move, the hand still gripping Stiles’s arm didn’t budge. A stray droplet of water from Derek’s damp hair slid down, splattering on Stiles’s cheek and after a beat, the pad of Derek’s thumb brushed it away. At that moment, Stiles lifted his head to stare directly up into Derek’s eyes. They drifted down to his lips once more and Stiles swallowed. He leant in. Their foreheads pressed together and Stiles’s eyes fluttered shut, his lips partly open as he tried to draw breath into his lungs. The taste of Derek’s breath across his lips only sent his heart rate skittering further into pandemonium.

 

 Derek’s grip on Stiles tightened as if the idea of letting him go was unbearable. Stiles’s hands searched Derek’s shoulders for purchase and it was all rough breath, clinging fingers, both of them urgent with relief and fear all rolled into one. Their noses just touched and it was more terrifying than all the bloodshed outside the room.

 

  “It’s the shock, the adrenaline,” Derek assured him when it felt like Stiles’s bones ached from shaking and Derek didn’t seem exactly collected himself. Derek’s eyes were almost obsidian, pupils blown wide. He was studying every fleck of amber in Stiles’s eyes, so close that Stiles swore he felt the movement of his lashes against his cheek. Stiles shuddered with the overwhelming proximity, his mind swimming, his body shaking for another reason now. It was so much after so long.

 

 Then, slowly, like a cat giving a reluctant stretch of limbs, Derek drew back, rising to his feet. “We have to get moving,” he said, offering a hand to Stiles.

 

 Stiles was frozen for a moment, staring at the outstretched hand for a heartbeat, before he took hold of it, letting Derek pull him to his feet. He got himself cleaned up as best as he could, as quickly as possible. Who knew how close Gerard and the others would be.

 

 It felt like disrespect to leave the house that had long ago been someone’s home in such a state, but every moment felt like a moment too long. Derek kept pausing as they chucked what little they had used back into the _Camaro_ , lifting his head and cocking it slightly as if listening. Stiles felt his heart in his throat by the time they pulled back onto the road and left the house behind, the town growing smaller and smaller in the back window.

 

 Stiles sat back in his seat, trying to relax as they sped away from the site of the massacre. He rolled down the window and closed his eyes, let his fingers curl in his lap but he didn’t feel any calmer. The feeling of unease didn’t abate. He swallowed, feeling wound tight like a coiled spring.

 

 “Something isn’t right,” Stiles murmured, whispering as if whatever it was that was coming could hear him.

 

 Derek’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “What do you mean?”

 

 Stiles shook his head. How could he explain it? He couldn’t. He just knew somehow that they weren’t driving away from the danger, they were driving into it.

 

 “Turn around,” he breathed, head whipping to the side when he saw Derek just glance at him, confused. There were tall trees either side of the steep main road up ahead, leading right through the woods. Stiles’s mind was screaming as they drove through them. “Turn around,” he cried urgently.

 

 Derek jerked the wheel, sending the car wheeling in an arc, aiming to turn it without pausing. Even as they began the turn, a shot ripped through the air. The car lurched. Derek slammed his foot down hard, speeding forward once more, into the trees, away from the town. His voice was loud in Stiles’s ears but still sounded distant, echoing behind the ringing filling Stiles’s head. He stared out the open window at the trees flashing by, his face stinging with the ferocity of the air lashing at his flesh.

 

 As soon as Stiles looked down, pain bloomed at the source of the crimson stain blossoming across the shoulder of his shirt. His breath staggered then left him entirely and his entire body shook. “Derek,” he gasped out as his hand hovered over the agony spreading through his shoulder, not wanting to touch, to make it more real. Years and years of his dad preparing him for the worst and it all flew from his mind.

 

 Where was his luck now?

 

 Only then did he realise that it was his name that Derek had been shouting.

 

 “Stiles! Put pressure on the wound. Hold on, okay? Hold on!”

 

 He reached out, grasping Stiles’s good shoulder with his free hand as he sped down the road, eyes focussed, brow tense. The pain trickled away through the contact but it didn’t stop Stiles’s panic or the feeling of light-headedness that accompanied it. He stared at the spreading blood. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped out, squeezed his eyes shut tight. His hand pressed down on his shoulder but it didn’t hurt. He pressed harder. The _Camaro_ roared across the tarmac.

 

 “Stay with me Stiles.”

 

 Stiles saw strange patterns behind his eyelids. The hand he had pressed to his shoulder was soaked in blood. Wet. Sticky. “Tell my dad,” he tried to pant out, though he wasn’t sure how much was coherent, “Tell him…”

 

 “Keep your eyes open, Stiles!” Derek cried and the point where he pressed into Stiles’s skin was too much. He couldn’t breathe.

 

 He shook his head and felt giddy with the lack of air.

 

 “I don’t want die out here,” he whispered. All the time he’d been alone he’d tried to come to terms with dying alone in the forest with no one to find him or to mourn him, had never really reconciled himself to that fate. He had feared that end more than anything but now, like this, so close to his dad yet so far, it felt like the cruellest end. “I want to…my dad…” He could speak. There wasn’t enough air even though it was rushing passed his ears at over a hundred miles an hour.

 

 “Stiles!”

 

 His head throbbed with the lack of oxygen, his heart thudded as panic sent blood weeping from his wound. His vision went black.

 

*

 

 It felt like jerking awake to the sensation of falling, like just catching yourself from nodding off upright at your desk. Stiles’s eyes flew open as if seconds had passed, his hand flying to his shoulder, but the familiar, cosy interior of the _Camaro_ was absent. The roar of the engine as Derek accelerated, pushed the car to carry them away from danger throbbing in Stiles’s chest, that sound had vanished too. Derek’s voice, calling his name over and over still felt as though it was ringing in his ears, even though the world around them was dark and silent.

 

 “Hey,” Derek said in a soothing, gentle murmur that Stiles had never heard before. He was at his side, his face partially illuminated by a flashlight standing up on the ground. He looked pallid, gaunt. “Take it easy.”

 

 Stiles glanced around. They were surrounded by trees and the ground below them was a gradual incline that grew steeper the further down into the trees it went. Just above, moonlight caught the edge of what he thought was a metal guard rail, indicating Derek had pulled them off the side of the road.

 

 “Where–?”

 

 “Not far from the town. I got us as far as I dared before I had to stop.”

 

 Stiles licked his dry lips. They tasted of blood and the startling metallic tang made him nod slowly as he processed what had happened. He’d been shot. Derek had kept going, knowing if they stopped there they would have no chance. He’d driven as far as he could before stopping because Stiles was bleeding out, had gone into shock, had a panic attack, _something_. So why didn’t he feel like someone with a hole in his shoulder?

 

 His body was largely resting against the sloping embankment and Derek’s hand was splayed on his torso, stopping him from rising further than his initial jerk upright. It hovered a little, letting him sit up more carefully to take stock of himself, but didn’t move away entirely. Even in spite of the situation, the contact, the care made warmth contract in Stiles’s belly.

 

 His muscles ached with the movement. Blood stained his long-sleeved t-shirt, the lingering dampness making his skin prickle with a chill in the night air. Gingerly, he raised his fingers to touch at his wounded shoulder. It felt sore, stiff but definitely not like a bullet had torn through it. He glanced at Derek, seeing his face blank, if weary and sickly, but he didn’t stop Stiles from tugging the collar of his shirt aside to get a good look at the wound. The wound that was now a dark, mottled bruise, tender but with no gaping, bloody mess of tissue.

 

 “Derek?” he asked, voice rough and raspy with trepidation. What was this?

 

 “It’s something I’ve seen only once,” Derek murmured, fatigued but also anxiously distracted, like his mind was working over something other than their conversation. “It’s something not all wolves know about, even for an alpha it’s unheard of. My mother did it to save Laura when she was stabbed through the chest with a led pipe in the riots in our home town.”

 

 Stiles frowned, studying what he could see of Derek’s face. “Derek, what have you done?” How was it that Stiles had been shot and Derek, the one with supernatural healing looked like he was about to collapse.

 

 Derek shook his head. “I’m fine. It’ll pass if I rest.”

 

 “What did you do?” Stiles demanded again, the firmness in his tone dragging Derek’s gaze back to him, reflecting the torchlight in his eyes in a way that no human’s would. It was like he was using his abilities to make the most of the diminutive light, to catch everything he could of Stiles’s reaction to his next words.

 

 “It’s similar to how I take your pain, but more,” he added. “I guess it could be considered invasive, drawing your pain while pushing some of my power through you simultaneously, enough to let it heal you. It can be dangerous, my mother nearly lost her alpha power entirely when she did it for Laura but she just managed to hang onto it. So did I.”

 

 Stiles reached for Derek, who flinched back, as if afraid of what Stiles might do with that hand. For a moment it was just suspended midair, not touching. Wary eyes watched him and Stiles just didn’t get it. Derek was acting as if the subtle, tactile nature of their friendship had changed somehow, or as if he were afraid it had changed at least.

 

 “Derek, I don’t give a damn how invasive it was, you saved my life,” Stiles breathed, reaching for him again.

 

 This time, Derek frowned as he sat back on the ground more fully, turning his gaze away from Stiles and up to the moonlight peeking from between the tall trees. The thick immovable mass of their trunks reached skyward for what seemed like forever, ancient as the earth and as tall as skyscrapers in the quiet darkness.

 

 “You saved mine,” Derek replied wistfully.

 

 “So we’re even,” Stiles said, “so what’s wrong? If it’s about what happened at the house, Derek we both did what we had to do to survive. I’m not proud of what we did, but they would’ve killed us or worse.”

 

 Derek set his jaw. “It’s not about the house.”

 

 Stiles glared. “Well then tell me what the hell is going on because we have to get our asses moving and I feel like I’m missing something big here.”

 

 Derek’s head didn’t turn to him. He didn’t so much as twitch, staring ever upward as if the heavens had the answers. His lips parted long before the words came to them. “There’s just something you need to know, and I don’t know how to explain it to someone who didn’t grow up in my world. What I did, Stiles, it’s not something that I could’ve done for anyone. I can take anyone’s pain, it’s something I draw _from_ them but to give something _into_ another’s body, push the alpha spark through to where it needs to heal, it needs a path to travel along. It needs circuit to direct the current.”

 

 Stiles’s blood ran cold. “Is there something wrong with me?”

 

 Tilting his chin to regard Stiles fully, Derek gave him a look of a person who had just asked something both foolish and sad.

 

 “An alpha’s spark is a blaze of power inside them, something that heightens their senses, their strength, gives them the capacity to be more than other wolves. My uncle Peter used to say the intensity of that spark was what made an alpha’s eyes burn red when their power spiked.”

 

 Stiles stared at him, his shoulder throbbing. He rubbed at it absently without turning his eyes away. He didn’t understand where this was going. “Are you saying you made me a werewolf?”

 

 Derek’s mouth set in a grim, frustrated line and he dragged his palm over the back of his neck, a trait that Stiles realised with a start, Derek had inherited from him over the weeks, months.

 

 “I didn’t bite you, I didn’t turn you,” Derek assured him. “Like I said, it’s hard to explain this to someone who doesn’t know what I know. This is knowledge my pack was just born into.” There was a long silence where Derek seemed to be running through what to say, before he managed to find the words.

 

 “The emissaries used to say that someone doesn’t need to be supernatural to do something amazing. Humans can work wolfsbane, they can run up to forty-five kilometres per hour, they can lift entire car wrecks to get to a trapped child. It’s the power of their training or born skill or belief that makes them able to do so but when someone has a spark it’s just…more. Every ordinary werewolf has a spark that makes them capable of inhuman acts, but a wolf with an alpha spark is capable of things unheard of. It’s a burst of…just more, am I making any sense?”

 

 Stiles’s head hurt with how much he was frowning and probably the stress of the entire day. “I’m a spark?”

 

 Derek’s expression twisted a little. “Yes and no. It’s not really something you are, it’s something you have, something you can use if your skill or belief or strength of will is strong enough. It can be a catalyst to make things happen.”

 

 Stiles must’ve looked as sceptical as he felt because Derek continued, like a stage actor seeing they were losing their audience.

 

 “Did you not wonder why you never got sick or how you healed just a little better and faster than normal? Nothing supernaturally remarkable but definitely faster than I’ve seen most humans heal. Did you never question how you made things at the tower last so long? How you made so much food grow so well? I never came into the greenhouse because I knew your spark was helping to maintain it and I didn’t want to corrupt it.” He turned to face Stiles fully now as if urged on by the desperation to make him understand. “Stiles, you made a tiny patch of wolfsbane spread through the entire forest just by _being_ there. You made the candles last impossibly long.”

 

 Stiles felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him with the strength of the realising blow as it all clicked into place. “I always had this prickle of awareness, nothing major just a feeling, you know? Enough to warn me when danger was near.” His voice was distant as he cast his mind back to all the times his ‘luck’ had gotten him out of a tight spot.

 

 Feeling overwhelmed, giddy with the realisation and the impossibility of it all he let out a nervous laugh. “Man I couldn’t have gotten a spark in my increased strength or something, huh?”

 

 “Stiles–”

 

 “So am I…what am I, exactly then? Why have I got this spark of power? How did I get it?”

 

 Derek was evidently realising the difficulty in explaining something he had grown up just knowing as it took him a moment to answer. “Humans have sparks too. It’s just like some people are faster, some are stronger. It’s a part of who you are, it always has been, although maybe it got more noticeable as you had to rely on it more, out here on your own. It’s a part of you that burns brighter than everyone else.”

 

 There was something so beautifully intimate and perfect about the way Derek had said that, his voice soft and the light subtle in his eyes. He was so close and the awe Derek expressed was both terrifying and overwhelming. Stiles was stunned speechless by it, his lips parted without sound as he drifted on the explanation he hadn’t realised he’d been waiting for all this time.

 

 A human could have a spark. All supernaturals had a spark, alphas had a more powerful one than other wolves that typically heightened their abilities. _He_ had a spark. He had an image of a little ball of electric light in his chest, spitting embers or in Derek’s case burning the same vibrant red of his eyes.

 

 “So I…could I do more?” he asked, voice a little hoarse. “Use it for more?”

 

 “I think maybe Deaton could teach you a few things, maybe, how to make it more reliable but it’s not like a booster you can switch to your strength, speed or brain power. It’s different for different people. For you I think it seems like–”

 

 “Like I can make the batteries last longer in the flashlight and have a _spidey_ _sense_?” Stiles suggested, a little disappointment tingeing his shock now.

 

 Derek’s lips twisted up at one corner and that warm look touched his eyes again as he said, “I thought of it more like a spark to extend life.”

 

 Stiles was absolutely stunned by his words, by the sight of him, everything about him not for the first time. His chest felt tight, like the spark they spoke of was zinging through his ribcage like a firework. He swallowed. It was a poetic yet sensible way to look at it, he supposed. The feeling, the sense he had for danger had helped prolong his life more than once. He’d been able to extend the life of a candle, of the generator, the torch batteries. He’d been able to make life flourish in the greenhouse. It made sense and he gave a small nod of agreement as he thought it through, though it didn’t stop the burn of heat from suffusing his cheeks with colour at Derek’s intensity.

 

 “How can I not know something like this about myself?” he almost whispered, reeling, feeling like he was spinning in a dark room with no sense of which way was up and which way was down.

 

 “It’s more common than you think,” Derek said, with a reflective tone that suggested he was remembering the way it used to be. “Unless they are aware of the supernatural, humans rarely realise it for what it is. They usually recognise it as a gift, a talent or skill or–”

 

 “Luck?” Stiles offered.

 

 Derek’s lips twitched. “Yeah, luck. My mother had a theory that the humans with the spark were the ones that survived the bite, I don’t know if that’s true or not but if you didn’t have it, Stiles you’d be dead right now.”

 

 Stiles blinked. “I resent the implication that I’m incapable of taking care of myself outside of some supernatural current running through me.”

 

 With a despairing sigh, Derek replied, “I meant that if you didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to heal you.” He sounded as weary as he looked now, worn down, still clammy and pallid like someone recovering from the flu. There were dark circles around his eyes.

 

 “So why do you look like shit, alpha spark?”

 

 Derek gave a short gust of laughter and just like that, the tension between them, born from Derek’s uncertainty at how Stiles would react to what he had told him, ebbed away into their usual comfortable companionship. “When I healed you, your spark drew on mine to heal you. A spark can burn out, mine could have when I healed you.”

 

 Stiles stared at him. “Then why did you risk it?” he asked before he could stop himself. The only answer he received was a little flicker of warmth in the slightly crinkling corners of Derek’s eyes, and a dip of Derek’s chin as he turned his gaze toward the trees.

 

 “It’ll recover with a little rest,” Derek murmured after a while, drawing his knees up to rest his arms across them.

 

 Stiles stared down the subtle incline they rested on, focussing on the place it turned steep and treacherous as it was swallowed by the shadows of the trees. Was it weird that he trusted Derek this much? To sit in the middle of the end of the world in near darkness and just know it was alright? Here in his company, danger felt like the stars and moon above, an absent afterthought beyond the thick cover of trees.

 

 They had to get moving. He didn’t know how far from the town Derek had managed to get them before he’d had to focus on Stiles’s wound, but he knew that much. The hunters couldn’t be far behind. The world was still moving, too fast and they had to remain one step ahead.

 

 Still, he had to ask, “so the alpha’s spark is what connects him or her to their pack?”

 

 Derek’s head jerked toward him in surprise, surprise at the astuteness of Stiles’s words, if Derek’s expression was anything to go by. He gave a small nod which Stiles echoed.

 

 “I already knew that the bigger the pack, the stronger the alpha. All wolves have a spark, it’s just the alpha spark is more.” He wondered if Derek had had anyone to talk to about this sort of thing, his heritage, his beliefs, his species. Stiles didn’t think so and he thought that was perhaps almost as isolating as living alone in the woods. “So the connection between a pack feeds the alpha’s spark, like a fire, making it burn brighter, right? It’s like a current that flows between them constantly.”

 

 Derek gave a short nod, but there was confusion in his eyes, as if he weren’t entirely sure where Stiles was going with this.

 

 “So,” Stiles began softly, carefully, very aware that tact had never been his speciality. “Couldn’t you use it to find Cora?”

 

 “Sometimes I swear I can feel something of her in the distance,” Derek murmured, wincing as if struck at the mention of Cora’s name. The words seemed difficult to get out, not only because of how fatigued he was. “It’s like knowing you’re not alone in a room, but there is no direction to the presence. I just know it’s there.” He hesitated. “It’s faint.”

 

 Stiles frowned as he tried to remember every scarce scrap of information he’d heard about werewolves before he’d lost contact with the world years ago. “I heard that an alpha’s cry could carry for miles. But I guess you can hardly howl down the moon now without drawing Gerard to us as well as her.”

 

 Derek made a noise of thought, of memory and drifted in his own mind before answering. “An alpha has to establish their pack, connect. I never had the chance to do that with her again after I inherited the position. If I had, we would’ve been able to find each other anywhere.”

 

 Again there was a fleeting glimpse of Derek as a much younger man who’d never had the chance to process and work through his grief. A deeply submerged weakness that resurfaced more and more, the stronger the trust grew between them. Stiles was reminded of that one perfect moment earlier that day, when he’d drifted off beside Derek on the same bed, the initial jerk in his belly when he’d awoken to Derek’s face so close, a finger across his lips, the…whatever that was in the aftermath of the battle in the house.

 

 He’d never wanted to make the world right for someone in his life.

 

 “We’ll find her,” Stiles said gently, reaching out to cup Derek’s hand where it had been resting on his own knee and squeezing in earnest reassurance. “We’ll find her, Derek. I promise.”

 

 Derek had tucked the _Camaro_ into an inlet of trees along the road above, a rushed, fleeting decision of hope that anyone driving passed would miss it in the darkness. Luckily, no one had followed yet, they hadn’t had to test the feeble hiding place.

 

 “Gerard will send reinforcements,” Derek said as they climbed gingerly over the guard rail, a wince breaking his features as he struggled to remain upright. “It’s about pride with him, pride and some sort of misguided mission statement. Entertainment. He won’t stop. We have to find out if Cora and Isaac are really in that old nature reserve and get as far away from Gerard as possible.”

 

 His voice had taken that stubborn, distant quality again, as if afraid of letting how much it would break him to leave without finding Cora again show through. Stiles tactfully said nothing, only nodding as they staggered toward the car.

 

 “I hope they have something back at the settlement to get blood out of leather,” Stiles said, not sure how to feel about his blood on Derek’s leather seats.

 

 Derek wiped it away with one of the spare shirts loose in the back. “I’ll deal with the stain when we’re safe.”

 

 “Doesn’t the smell bother you?” Stiles asked, but Derek only grunted, stunning Stiles by opening the passenger door for _himself_ after wiping the seat clean, without Stiles having to insist he was in better shape to take the wheel. It had been an automatic decision to trust him, leave him to the task to get them to safety. Stiles couldn’t help the beginnings of a smile touching his lips, even amidst the turmoil.

 

 Stiles’s shoulder, his muscles clenched in protest as he pulled on a nearly clean shirt and hoody from the back. He settled into the driver’s seat in time to glimpse a hole in Derek’s seat where the bullet had gone through. It was probably still lodged in it somewhere and Stiles felt incredibly uncomfortable about that, especially given Derek’s super senses.

 

 Derek glanced at him with a frown as he pulled his own door shut, evidently wondering what he was staring at.

 

 It all felt so surreal, to be this normal in the wake of everything that had happened. Stiles supposed the brain’s ability to compartmentalise, to get through trauma, to push it all away until it was safe to break down on higher ground was even more astounding than the professional’s he’d seen as a youth had advised.

 

 He was going to fall to pieces in his dad’s arms when he saw him again. When, not if. He knew that Derek would do whatever it took to help him get home, that he wasn’t alone on that seemingly impossible journey. That Derek had his back. He’d had risked the very thing that had likely given him the advantage in order to survive this long, there wasn’t much more he could do to earn Stiles’s trust than that.

 

 The _Camaro_ rumbled into life and Stiles reversed it back onto the road before guiding it forward through the dark empty void between the trees.

 

 “Derek?” he asked after they were far enough along the road that the woods had completely shrouded the sky from view. Silence had filled the car and Derek’s body had slumped a little as exhaustion started to take its toll. Stiles’s mind had been racing though, made worse by the quiet. He had to ask, “when did you realise I had a spark?” Derek had said he’d avoided coming into the greenhouse for that reason, after all.

 

 “I felt it when I took your pain after the mountain lion attacked,” Derek murmured, his head resting limply back against the headrest, tilting toward the now closed window so that Stiles could glimpse his reflection in the glass. He looked pensive, still drained as if his thoughts were all that kept him from unconsciousness. His thoughts and probably Stiles’s lack of verbal restraint.

 

 “Why didn’t you mention it before?” Stiles asked, feeling like he’d been struck. “All this time and you never even hinted.”

 

 Derek’s head rolled slowly toward him without ever really lifting from its resting place. His pupils were still dilated, conspiring with the darkness to swallow any colour in his eyes but his focus on Stiles had laser precision. “Would you have believed me?” he asked and there was a cushion of warmth around the challenge.

 

 Stiles’s gaze lingered as long as he dared before turning back to the dark road. It was getting steadily steeper with more turns the further away from the town they moved. “I guess not,” he admitted. The sense that answer made and the truth in it didn’t assuage his irritation or hurt any though. It made him prickle uncomfortably after the realisation of just how much he trusted Derek. How…comfortable he’d gotten with him.

 

 “You could’ve said something any time after that,” he pressed, unable to let it go just like that.

 

 Derek exhaled, tired and frustrated. “It’s a pretty unbelievable fact to hand someone who didn’t grow up with the knowledge I did about the supernatural, especially someone who had no reason to trust a word I was saying anyway.”

 

Stiles swallowed, thinking of the moment he’d awoken to find a strange creature in his tower, breaking the solitude and illusion of safety he’d built around himself. He tried to imagine how he might’ve reacted then to this knowledge but he couldn’t. He hadn’t even believed his father was alive at first, hadn’t dared to.

 

 It struck him then what the exact words that Derek had used meant and his breath skipped over an inhalation. Two. Three. What those words implied, was that Derek hadn’t said anything because he hadn’t thought Stiles would trust him enough to believe something so outrageous. Stiles wasn’t sure if it was because Derek had so little self-worth, because of his negative experience with people or perhaps a million other things and those combined, but he’d heard what Derek meant loud and clear. The instances where Derek hesitated to utilize his true abilities were just a few examples of the fact that, for whatever reason, Derek didn’t think that Stiles trusted him.

 

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” Stiles agreed. He moistened his lips before adding, “but I do now.” He trusted him now, imperfections notwithstanding. Another of his glances caught Derek’s eyes following the movement of his mouth and Stiles’s breath skittered again just for a moment. He looked firmly back at the road and after a long while, he heard Derek’s breathing deepen with sleep. The impression of the fond surprise on Derek’s face, inspired by his words didn’t leave him until long after the sun had come up.


	6. In The Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay guys, I recieved an extra workload to do at home so my 'me time' aka writing time was swallowed up. Thank you for your patience and your support. Hope you're still enjoying reading this as much as I am writing :)
> 
>  
> 
> _P.S. I am enjoying the slow burn (and hope you are too?) but your patience will be awarded soon, promise ;)_

Chapter Six **  
**

**In The Moonlight**

 The full moons that Stiles had experienced in Derek’s company had been no more or less remarkable than any other. There was always a withdrawn, jittery edge to him though, like a man constantly waiting for something. That was only exacerbated by the pressure of the hunters following them and the possibility of finding Cora. They’d swapped positions in the car at dawn, when Derek had awoken looking almost like himself, but when he’d taken the wheel it’d been with that familiar uneasy energy mixed with pensive silence.

 

 Stiles wound the red string around his fingers the way his mother had done with him when he was little and they’d sat out on the porch on the summer evenings, cross-legged and playing cat’s cradle, waiting for his dad to come off shift. He slid his long middle finger through the parallel loop on the opposite hand and pulled, keeping his hands as busy as his mind.

 

 The full moon was coming that night. Stiles couldn’t help but think that the hunters might consider it poetic to chase them down while it was high in the sky. If not them, perhaps Cora, if she really was out there.

 

 “What’s the likelihood that we can get into the reserve and out again before the moon rises?” Stiles asked as he pulled the string taut via another loop. The string was soft and worn from use by now, he’d done this so often since they’d left the tower. He found the mindless, constant movement soothingly distracting.

 

 There was a strange feeling still tickling at the back of his mind that wouldn’t settle, a sensation that whispered that they needed to get away from the reserve while they still could. It wasn’t as intense as the dark presence the bone men haunted him with, but it set his teeth on edge nonetheless, made him remember the anxiety when he tried to sleep after watching a scary movie he’d been too young to see.

 

 “We’ll have to hide the car, we can’t just drive into the trees,” Derek said eventually, checking the mirrors often, as if he didn’t want to rely only on his abilities after the hunters had managed to get the jump on them back at the house. They knew how to sneak up on a werewolf, Derek had said, so they couldn’t depend Derek’s supernatural senses. They had to be smart, quiet, quick.

 

 “If you want to stay with the car, you’d better say so now.” Derek hesitated. “We got lucky in the house. They didn’t anticipate you stepping in to save me, for us to work so well together. They underestimated us, they won’t again.”

 

 “You make it sound like we got off easy,” Stiles offered, thinking of the blood, of the sound of the trap’s metal jaws snapping shut around Derek’s leg, the shock of cold as the bullet had ripped through him. If he let himself think about it, he could feel the rush of panic gnawing at the back of his mind, ready to surge up and take him over like a treacherous undercurrent. So he didn’t think.

 

 He twisted the string in his grasp, focussing on the stark red against his skin and the places where his flesh pinched and pinked under the pressure of the fraying fibres.

 

 “We did get off easy,” Derek said bluntly, glancing across, eyes lingering for a touch longer on the movement of Stiles string-entwined fingers. “If you want to stay with the car–”

 

 “Can you stop with that?” Stiles cut him off heatedly, speaking almost in one breath. “I’m not staying with the car. You said it yourself, we worked well together. We’ve got synergy, dude and if you think I’m letting you march off into a mess of hunters and monsters while I’m so on edge it’s like the _Insidious_ theme song is on repeat somewhere, you’re insane. We’re in this together, alright. We’re a team. And there’s no I in team. I’m not alone anymore and neither are you so stop acting like you have to face down what’s left of the world by yourself.”

 

 Derek looked over at him then, his initial confusion fading into fond exasperation. “You really have no control over your mouth when you’re passionate about something, do you?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. He seemed to internally sigh as he looked back to the road but Stiles couldn’t help but notice the little twitch to the corner of his mouth. Solidarity with someone who’d seen him at his worst probably wasn’t something Derek had experienced often, if ever.

 

 “Your dad always said his kid chattered like a monkey.”

 

 Stiles gave a snort of a laugh, flicking the red string off his fingers and straightening it out before starting all over again, sliding one finger under the loop and pulling taught. He couldn’t help but notice the way Derek glanced at his hands every so often and Stiles wondered if he was annoying him but he didn’t look aggravated he looked almost…appreciative. And not of the string either.

 

 Stiles shifted in his seat and pulled at another loop.

 

 “Did my dad talk about me a lot?”

 

 Derek nodded. “He talked about your mother too. Not all the time just…little comments I guess, or if someone caught him lost in his thoughts he’d say something like, ‘Stiles had this way of breaking awkward silences’ or ‘Stiles would give me hell for eating this.’” Derek’s fingers curled a little tighter around the steering wheel. “It broke his heart, you know? I think if he hadn’t had the other _Beacon Hills_ survivors to think of, the kids, the elderly, he would’ve just laid down and died after he lost you.”

 

 Stiles felt a knot in his throat and swallowed hard, curled his fingers closed around the string now. “Yeah I…he was a good Sheriff. A good leader. Makes sense he’s kinda in charge at the settlement. He’s always good in a crisis.” Except when his mother had died, of course.

 

 His dad had all-but given up after losing his wife. He’d almost gone through the first eighteen months without her on autopilot, surviving life, rather than living it, unwittingly leaving Stiles to take care of a lot of the household chores and upkeep, to fix the meals and get himself to school. Then one day, his dad had come home to find Stiles elbow deep in dishwater at the kitchen sink, a basket full of clean folded laundry behind him on the counter and empty grocery bags on the side.

 

 Stiles had turned his head and called out, ‘your dinner’s in the fridge, dad.’ And his dad had just stared at him for a long time, no doubt realising just how much his son had forced to grow up, how much responsibility he’d taken on. His dad had been better after that, for him, Stiles thought. But they’d been better _together_ and Stiles couldn’t imagine him carrying on after losing Stiles too, it seemed, jarring.

 

 “I don’t think he ever really stopped believing he’d turn around and see you standing there, even though he thought you were dead. It’s almost like he’s still waiting.”

 

 Stiles cuffed away the tears that had gathered in the corners of his eyes and cleared his throat. He didn’t know what to say to that. His chest ached with the lack of his dad, with the thought of his dad still out there, thinking he was all alone. He’d felt that himself for long enough.

 

  _Not long now_ , he told himself.

 

 “I used to wonder who was looking up at the same sky as me, you know?” Stiles asked, thinking of the oncoming moon that night yet again. At least their conversation seemed to have calmed the nervous energy in Derek some, relaxed him. After a moment of silence he added, “do werewolves really howl at the moon?” He couldn’t shake the idea of Derek’s solitary black wolf, his head tipped back as he bayed mournfully, called into the dark nothingness in an effort to expel his loneliness.

 

 “We howl to the pack, not to the moon,” Derek said distantly.

 

 Stiles wondered if he had done exactly that and received nothing but echoes in answer. He wondered who Derek was thinking of at that moment most prominently, Cora, Laura, his uncle, his parents. There was so much loss in Derek that Stiles often speculated who occupied the moments he seemed to drift.

 

 “What was it like having a big family?” he asked before he could stop himself. When Derek tensed, knuckles going white around the steering wheel, instead of backtracking all Stiles could do was talk and talk and talk until his head was buzzing. “I mean, Mom, she had a hard time with me.” He gave a little snort, “In so many ways, seriously. But she couldn’t have any more kids after me and when she died I always thought, you know, how it might’ve been nice to have someone. Someone else to share all that heartache with, even when Dad didn’t want to talk about it at all. My dad’s great. I love him, you know? And we always did everything together, even after mom died he made a real effort to make time for me. Maybe especially then. But he’s not a talker you know?”

 

 “He probably didn’t get much chance,” Derek offered, deadpan and Stiles gave a startled laugh. Derek’s lips twitched. The banter, the opening up, the casual touching, it was getting easier. So perfectly, painfully, beautifully easy. Scary.

 

 “Ha,” Stiles replied. “So you were the middle kid? That’s gotta have been tough, or at least, that’s what everyone says.”

 

 Derek shrugged and for a beat Stiles thought that was the only reply he’d get. Then Derek did that thing, where his lips parted, on the precipice of speech just a second before his actual words followed. “I didn’t really feel like a victim of middle child syndrome or anything. Laura was the oldest, the one who would succeed my mother to become alpha. Maybe it was because my mother worked her pretty hard but she was really my dad’s girl, you know? They were the jokers. They’d laugh and she, dad and my grandparents used to spend a lot of time in the woods. We called it hiking but it was more…”

 

 Stiles blinked. He was reluctant to speak and interrupt probably the longest monologue Derek had ever given but when the quiet descended he suggested, “like werewolf camping?”

 

 “Running. I guess. They loved to just run and run. Dad used to say he was checking the perimeter but he was so relaxed he didn’t really worry about any of that, not really. Cora was the baby so everyone loved her. She used to follow my uncle Peter around like a little duck and he’d pretend to be irritated, try to get her into trouble. He was more like an older brother than an uncle. He was such a dick.” There was an edge of doting amusement similar to the kind he expressed with Stiles that touched his expression and Stiles’s heart stuttered in appreciation of the warmth in Derek’s eyes, his voice. Like everything else, he likely didn’t get the chance to recall his family in a positive light with anyone either.

 

 “So you were a mama’s boy, huh?” Stiles asked, reading between the lines, a light teasing to his voice that he hoped would keep the tone light, stop Derek from slipping into the melancholy that would likely follow his nostalgia. To his delight, a light flush burned Derek’s cheeks.

 

 “Laura used to say that, I guess,” he replied awkwardly.

 

  Stiles gave a gleeful laugh that for just that moment chased the demons from his head, dampened the eerie pulse of darkness at the corner of his mind like sunlight breaking through a veil of dark clouds.

 

 “Dude, you are just totally adorable when you blush,” he said before he could stop himself. He gave a smaller, more nervous laugh when he saw the surprise register on Derek’s face before he glanced back to the road again. Stiles cleared his throat. Derek was a good few years older, but Stiles didn’t think he had much more experience with compliments or affection or…romance? His own face burned uncomfortably at the easy appearance of that word in his mind and he twisted the red string around one finger now, wrapping it round and round before moving it along to the next.

 

 “It’s highly likely that I’ll talk one of us into an early grave before we get anywhere near the settlement,” Stiles mused half-heartedly. “My dad did sort of warn you, I guess.”

 

 Derek was silent for a moment, then he shrugged, staring straight ahead. “I don’t mind it.”

 

 Stiles blinked. “You don’t?”

 

 “You say some peculiar things. Some crazy shit and you never sit still,” Derek added the latter with a tone of exasperation.

 

 “But?” Stiles prompted. “There is a ‘but’, right?”

 

 “I like your company,” Derek said, almost defensively, “you have a wicked sense of humour and there’s just…there’s something about you that hasn’t been tainted by everything you’ve seen. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

 

 The tinge of awe in his tone made everything in Stiles stop, made his brain lull into a state of surprised calm and he braved a glance at Derek, who was determinedly not looking at him. He had trouble expressing himself in a way that was the opposite to Stiles. Stiles kept talking himself in circles whereas Derek seemed to rarely speak about what he felt at all. He was now though. In fact he’d offered more consecutive words in the last day or so than he had since Stiles had known him.

 

 Stiles wondered if it was because the last great barrier, Derek knowing about Stiles’s spark, had come down between them but something had changed. He remembered the feel of Derek’s breath on his lips and licked them self-consciously.

 

 “I never really met many people,” Stiles said eventually. “I mean, never _really_ got to know many people. Beacon Hills isn’t that big and everyone knew I was the Sheriff’s kid. It sort of came with a stigma in middle school, you know? That was the age everyone started doing things they shouldn’t so they avoided me. And I was kind of a weirdo anyway which didn’t help. I only really had Scott, he was my best friend. My only friend, really.

 

 “When the world started to go to shit and I was a bit older me and Heather, the daughter of my mom’s best friend had like a one-time thing. We used to be close when we were toddlers, but we got to know each other in this sort of desperate, end of the world, don’t want to die a virgin way. And after that there was this one time, with one of my dad’s deputies, one of the guys who was a few years older than me in school. But it wasn’t…it wasn’t a connection you know?”

 

 He dragged his hand through his hair, bracing an elbow on the car door by the window and dragging his mouth across his knuckles as he tried to make his thoughts slow enough for him to grasp them before they came out of his mouth. As always, he was nervously talking himself into a deeper and deeper hole. There was no helping it. “Did you? Have a connection, I mean?”

 

 Derek’s jaw tensed in that way, the way Stiles knew meant his own demons were making themselves known. “I had my family.”

 

 Stiles knew a dismissal when he heard one, he’d experienced enough of them in his life. He was also well-practiced in taking them gracefully though and he just nodded a few times, pressing the first knuckle of his thumb into his lower lip as he watched the world outside. The silence that swept through the car was so thick with tension that when Derek spoke Stiles jumped a little, even though his voice was soft, almost distant.

 

 “I thought I had a connection…once…before.”

 

 Stiles turned his head slowly, reluctant to make any fast movement that would jerk Derek from his reverie, from this place where he felt he could tell Stiles this, for whatever reason. He bit the inside of his lower lip, struggling valiantly to not interrupt.

 

 “She got me to trust her,” Derek said, face set with a dark, drawn distaste for the memories evidently clouding his mind. His fingers curled a little tighter around the steering wheel. “She turned out to be a hunter and tried to burn my house to the ground with my family inside it, back in our home town long before the alpha pack outed us to the world.” He said it so matter of fact, so rigidly as if he wanted to give nothing away.

 

 “Holy shit,” Stiles gasped before he could stop himself.

 

 Derek lifted his chin a little in defiance of the emotion likely driving through his veins. “She failed. My uncle Peter and my sister Laura, they were arriving home from some function or other, they caught her in the act but she escaped.” His nostrils flared as he exhaled with tight, contained sufferance. “So a couple of years later, when the world turned to shit, her and her father took advantage and outed us to the humans instead.”

 

 Their actions had resulted in the riots that had killed some of the Hales, leaving the survivors to flee their home town, Stiles’s mind supplied. His feet scuffed together in the footwell and he shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat as he put the pieces together from what Derek had told him thus far.

 

 “She used you to get to your family,” Stiles surmised, reading between the lines. He watched out of the corner of his eye, not quite daring to look straight on. Derek’s jaw tightened, ticked at the corner as if the hinge were about to snap from the tension there.

 

 “She was a hunter,” Derek repeated tightly, as if that explained everything and Stiles nodded slowly as he processed that. It didn’t take a great detective to deduce why Derek was taking it so personally. He felt guilty, he felt betrayed, hurt. He’d loved her, perhaps, or thought he might have at least. And if it had happened before Derek had come to _Beacon Hills_ , before werewolves were outed to the world, he must’ve been young, very young.

 

 “What happened to her?” It was too much to hope lyncanthropy or the bone men had torn her to shreds, he supposed.

 

 Exhaling through his nose once more with the composure of an incensed bull, Derek muttered with dark satisfaction, “in the riot where we lost some of our family, my uncle Peter used her own gun to shoot her in the throat.” He gave a little shrug. “My mother was furious, said Peter had shown them we were every bit the monsters we were accused of being but…” But he was glad Peter had done it, wasn’t ashamed of that, whatever other self-deprecating demons plagued him every day.

 

 He wasn’t sorry the woman that had cost him so much was gone.

 

 Stiles couldn’t blame him. “One good thing about the apocalypse, I guess.” If he were in Derek’s shoes, he would have felt exactly the same. “Did he get the dad too before you had to get out of dodge?”

 

 “If only,” Derek replied without inflection, distant and distracted as if he were contemplating the riot, the moment he’d lost members of his family perhaps or whatever else had happened after the woman had fallen that day. After a long while, during which Stiles had given up expecting further explanation, Derek said darkly, voice like the first slow, ominous roll of thunder signalling the onset of the storm, “her name was Kate Argent.”

 

 Kate Argent.

 

 Judging by the pointed silence that followed that statement, Stiles knew, just _knew_ what that meant. Kate Argent, daughter of Gerard Argent. the man that was hunting them, possibly hunting Cora. He was the father of the woman that had tried to burn the Hales alive, had orchestrated the riot that had killed some of Derek’s family and driven the rest from their hometown. Suddenly Derek’s reaction to him out on the road, the way he’d forsaken his pride, everything to get away from Gerard’s company unscathed, it made sense, clicked into place like the last piece of the puzzle.

 

 Still, there was one thing that didn’t make sense and despite the mood that had settled over them, Stiles couldn’t help but voice his confusion. “Didn’t you say there was  Chris Argent helping to run the settlement with my dad?”

 

 Derek cut him a glance. “I’m surprised you remembered that.” It had been months ago, after all, that conversation. Almost another lifetime away. “Chris isn’t like them.”

 

 That was the only answer Stiles received. Even though it opened up another world of questions, it was the only thing Derek said in a long time. They drove through a little cluster of houses at the edge of the woods. The reserve had been built on the grounds of an old abandoned mine. The houses had once belonged to the miners decades ago, Stiles guessed. They looked to have gone into disrepair long before the apocalypse, modest dwellings for only one or two people. They stowed the _Camaro_ in the garage of one of them, covering any sign they’d come this way as best they could, before heading into the trees on foot with the bare essentials in the bags slung over their backs.

 

 Stiles’s eyes were everywhere as they moved further and further into the untrustworthy embrace of the forest. He could hear birds and the movement of the trees in the subtle oncoming autumn air, there was a sense of life here, the same as there had been in _Salvada_ but that didn’t abate the wrongness that radiated from it.

 

 The sense of danger didn’t come from behind them, from where the hunters were no doubt approaching in the far distance, it was all around them.

 

 “You sense something,” Derek noted.

 

 It still felt bizarre to know the feeling was real, that it wasn’t simply unreliable luck, wishful thinking or an overactive imagination. It was real. It was another sense as real as his eyesight or sense of smell. It was real and Derek had asked him about it like he could trust it, like _Derek_ trusted it. Right then, he supposed it was more reliable than Dereks’s werewolf abilities, with the hunters able to disguise themselves against them.

 

 Stiles wished he knew more, wished could do more, especially since it could be an edge against hunters, who would likely assume they’d rely on werewolf skills alone. They could be quick, they could be quiet, be smart but what if the hunters were smarter? They’d been doing this for years, after all.

 

 “It’s different from the feeling I got from the hunters,” Stiles replied. He couldn’t explain it better than that, but from the way Derek nodded as he looked about them, testing the air with his own senses, it seemed he understood well enough. Stiles bit the inside of his mouth. “It’s not as intense as the wrongness from the bone men. But it feels like them too.” When Derek met his eyes he dragged his hand up through the back of his hair self-consciously. “I know I can’t possibly know–”

 

 “I think you know more than you realise.”

 

 The weight of the rucksack was distributed unevenly from where Stiles had swung it over one shoulder like he’d used to in school, even after all these years. He pulled the other strap over his arm to carry the weight more comfortably as they moved deeper into the trees. He felt wrong, exposed out here and he couldn’t help but scan the wilderness for a glimpse of the unnatural eyes he felt on him. He took a few quick steps to catch up to Derek and ducked his head, a little abashed when Derek turned his head to look at him. He slowed his pace though, falling into step beside Stiles without saying a word.

 

 “What does it feel like, your spark?” Derek asked after a good dozen feet of quiet. When Stiles just looked at him he jerked his chin in annoyance. “If you treat it like it’s taboo you’ll never learn more about it. It’s a feeling for you, right? An instinct for when to be guarded or when to move away from something?”

 

 Stiles licked his lips and again, Derek’s eyes moved to the motion, before turning back to their path ahead. “It’s like a sense of foreboding a lot of the time. It varies in strength. I used to just think it was my gut, you know? I suppose it is, like some sparked-up super gut instinct or something?” He remembered the night in that house, all those years ago, when the bone men had stood over him and his instincts had woken him long before they’d entered the house. He shuddered now, seeing their glowing ‘eyes’ in the chasms of their lifeless sockets everywhere.

 

 “So what’s it telling you now?” Derek asked.

 

 Stiles stopped and Derek mimicked the motion almost instantly, offering Stiles the startling realisation of just how in tune their movements were becoming. He was aware of every little twitch Derek made and Derek seemed to react the same to him, maybe moreso, as a wolf. He realised then that Derek was looking for an answer and stared about the forest again, searching for it, a pull in either direction.

 

 “It’s not like a voice inside me telling me what to do,” Stiles tried to explain, frustrated. “It’s just a feeling, I didn’t even really notice it until you mentioned it. It’s just something that’s there, something I automatically just _did_ for years. I don’t know how to put that into words.”

 

 “So don’t,” Derek said, as if it was so simple. “Don’t explain it, just tell me what it makes you want to do.”

 

 With an exasperated sigh, Stiles dragged his thumbs under the straps of the rucksack, and pushed the pressure off his shoulders, turning to either side as if the trees held the answer. This thing inside him, it wasn’t something he could listen to he just…

 

 “It just makes me want to get as far away as possible,” Stiles said at last, feeling useless.

 

 “Away from what direction in particular?” Derek asked. When Stiles didn’t answer right away he reached out, without thinking, broad fingers closing around Stiles’s wrist and drawing him a few steps forward. When Stiles didn’t react, he moved him in another direction, then another.

 

 Stiles just followed in stumbling steps, his wrist tingling at the contact even through the sleeve of his red hoody. His chest tightened and his stomach flipped. His skin rose with goosebumps all the way up his arm and his lips parted slightly but before he could say a word, Derek tugged him in another direction. He jerked to face him when Stiles instinctively dug his heels into the ground.

 

 “This way, huh?” Derek asked, releasing Stiles’s wrist only to lunge and grasp him by his biceps when he stumbled at the sudden absence of contact. Derek drew closer, searching his face and Stiles regained his footing but hesitated on meeting Derek’s eyes. When he did, there was some understanding there, some echo of reciprocation at the warmth the contact filled him with. It was growing a little more each day and with every little casual touch he felt a little less crazy, a little less hopeless. In that moment he could clearly see the same thought reflected in complicated green eyes.

 

 “Let’s go,” Derek breathed, squeezing his arms before releasing them.

 

 Stiles blinked. “You want to go _toward_ the place my bad-vibe-ometer is telling us to steer clear of?” he demanded in disbelief, even though he knew it was their only choice. Knowing that didn’t ease the sensation of his stomach clenching in negation at every step. Every movement was accompanied by a harrowing sense of dread that made bile burn up his throat, as if the dried meat he’d swallowed down for ‘breakfast’ were still lodged somewhere in his chest. It was all exacerbated by the pitiful amount of sleep they’d had but he knew they had to keep moving. If Cora was here they needed to find her and get out before the moon rose, he didn’t know _how_ but he just knew it.

 

 The spark, the sense of foreboding, it only grew in strength as they walked. By the time the sun was high in the sky beyond the veil of trees, his head was pounding and his body was screaming with exhaustion. He hadn’t stopped but even he could tell his pace had slowed considerably.

 

 The ground began to slope downward in such a way that even with the old overgrown, near forgotten path the miners had once travelled, Stiles found himself stumbling over his feet. The trail grew more and more steep but in the distance, down in the pit of the valley, Stiles thought he could _just_ make out the edges of the old mine entrance. One of them at least. When he’d considered the map last, it had looked like the mine had once been a labyrinth of sorts with at least three entrances.

 

 In his mind, he pictured the gaping, cavernous opening, daring anyone to brave the darkness within. He imagined what might lurk in the dark and felt his stomach churn, felt an awful hunch that if there was any place he wanted to visit _least_ , it would be there. Already he could imagine the red eyes in the face of nothing and the icy fingers of the bone men grasping at him while he was all but blind.

 

 He missed his step with a jerk and Stiles stumbled, arms spiralling. Derek’s hand flew out and caught him round the chest at the last second and hauled him back upright against the nearest tree, steadying him even as Stiles’s chest heaved. As Derek had caught him, Stiles had grasped Derek’s arm instinctively and he didn’t let go immediately even when he was upright. His eyes fell shut as he waited for the initial shock of the near fall to subside.

 

 “Whoa,” he panted, resting his head back against the tree. “That would’ve been nasty.”

 

 “Where was your head at?” Derek demanded, voice sharp. His brow was furrowed with worry when Stiles finally cracked open his eyes again.

 

 Stiles glanced down the incline of the earth, wondering just how much damage he might’ve done himself if he’d fallen. Then his eyes caught the glimpse of the wooden supports of the mine shaft in the distance and he winced. “Just a feeling,” he murmured. “Overactive imagination, I guess.”

 

 Slowly, Derek withdrew his stabilising arm, as if he weren’t entirely sure Stiles could remain upright if he took it away. He followed Stiles’s gaze thoughtfully. For a fleeting second, Stiles thought there was a worrying hint in Derek’s expression that Stiles’s feeling may have more substance than just his imagination, but it was gone before he could question it.

 

 “Let’s take a breather,” Derek offered, reaching into the back slung over his shoulder and offering one of the boxes up to Stiles containing some of the dried fruit and meat.

 

 Stiles hesitated, then shook his head. “You don’t have to slow down for me. I can keep going.” When he moved to step forward, however, Derek’s hand splayed across his chest to halt him. Stiles could feel his touch even through two t-shirts and his hoody and it felt like everything in him stopped at the contact. He studied Derek’s face with guarded uncertainty, knowing how close they were, how pivotal it was that they stay ahead of Gerard. Time was not on their side and he _knew_ he was slowing Derek down. He couldn’t bear it. If they failed, if something happened and it was his fault…

 

 “We both need to rest,” Derek said, even as Stiles’s heartbeat ticked upward at the lingering touch.

 

 “I’m good,” Stiles promised but didn’t move forward.

 

 Derek’s face twisted with frustration. “You know I can hear your heartbeat, right?”

 

 Stiles blinked, “Y-Yeah.” In the abstract sense he’d known it but it still felt like the jerk of a missed step to hear it confirmed. Derek had never called him on it but Stiles had felt for a long time that Derek knew when he was lying. He’d known that werewolves and other supernatural beings could read chemosignals at least, those rumours had spread before they’d been forced to run from _Beacon Hills_. Derek had confirmed the truth in them not long after they’d met. But aside from those moments where Derek would incline his head slightly as if listening or reading something from his scent, he’d ever actually shown any sign of that ability to read anything from him.

 

 Because he trusted Stiles enough now, knew he didn’t have to be afraid of Stiles’s reaction to what he was.

 

 Still, Stiles knew a moment of panic at what Derek might have read from him in the last couple of months, something he’d never been forced to consider, especially given the gradual build in his connection to Derek. Derek’s eyes scanned him as his face burned, eyebrows still drawn in a little as if he wasn’t certain of something. Stiles felt his breath catch, knew Derek could hear that too without any shadow of a doubt, without any delusion of denial. He couldn’t help but realise that Derek looked at him so often like he was seeing something deeper than his skin.

“It’s not like I can read your mind,” Derek said, perhaps a little quickly, evidently sensing Stiles’s panic.

 

 “I know.” Stiles knew, he _knew_ it was just Derek’s way of saying he knew Stiles was shattered and needed to rest and wasn’t going to let him walk until he wore his feet away but that wasn’t what had Stiles avoiding his eyes. He lowered himself to the higher, flatter ground that stretched around the steeper incline like a defensive arm around the lower ground and abandoned mine at the edge of the small valley below. He rested his back against one of the trees there, digging through the food Derek had offered and holding some out to Derek without really looking. After resealing the container, he took a deep drink of water if only to keep his mouth too occupied to say something stupid.

 

 It wasn’t that Derek had this ability, _that_ had been something he’d known in the back of his mind. No. It was the fact that those words, that admission of Derek’s had made him realise that he had something to hide. When he made to gather himself after Derek had finished taking a few deep gulps of water himself, Derek held a hand out to stall him.

 

 “We should rest.”

 

 “We should keep going,” Stiles protested, because Gerard hadn’t stopped, of that he was sure. Because the mine just a few hundred yards away still gave him chills. His bones were practically humming with unease even though he was so tired they ached simultaneously, hyper alert yet exhausted beyond words. He was pretty sure the tightness in his neck, the ache in his skull was the result of being tense too long and too little sleep.

 

 It didn’t make sense in any way to stop right then. He’d been in this situatiom before, so tired he thought he might collapse if he took another step, sore and sick of the feeling of doom pressing down on him. But he’d kept moving because he’d known if he didn’t, he’d be a lot worse off.

 

 “We have enough of a head start, ten minutes to recharge is not going to make a difference,” Derek protested.

 

 Stiles dragged a hand across the back of his neck, grinding the pads of his fingers into the tight knots there. He jumped when Derek moved forward, the closeness making him blink like some startled deer and for a second the look in Derek’s eyes was that of the wolf. As he always did whenever he crossed the boundaries of human contact, he seemed to search Stiles’s face, before reaching out, letting his broad fingers curl around Stiles’s nape.

 

 Drawing in a sharp, stuttered breath, Stiles tensed.

 

 Derek’s eyes flickered down to the place where his heart was pounding frantically. Stiles wanted to squint his eyes shut because he _knew_ he just knew Derek was seeing something Stiles didn’t want him to see but he wasn’t even sure what that was. He kept his eyes open, because to close them would have given even more of himself away. That was when he saw black tendrils creeping up Derek’s arm, drawing the soreness and discomfort that lack of sleep and stress invoked. His body almost slumped in relief as it all left him and as Derek’s hand drew back his did let his head tip back against the tree.

 

 A shiver carried through Stiles that, in that moment at least, was more to do with cold than unease. He thought longingly of the warmth and perhaps misguided sense of security of the _Camaro_ and his blankets in the footwell. He didn’t even realise he’d closed his eyes until they opened again to see a black wolf staring back at him with Derek’s hazel green eyes. Again Derek seemed to hesitate, giving Stiles all the time in the world to protest or escape, before he stretched out half across Stiles’s legs, the heat of him soaking into Stiles’s body.

 

 “Dude, you are cosy,” Stiles groaned in appreciation. He hated being cold and he’d spent too much of his adult life cold and alone. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

 

 There was an almost inaudible huff as Derek settled, the bulk of his weight curled against his side with his head resting on his paws just over Stiles. It kept Stiles from being crushed at least, because Derek was immense in this form. It also allowed Stiles to luxuriate in the comforting warmth of contact without the complication of the way Derek, as a man, made him feel things he didn’t have a name for, didn’t have time to try and discern.

 

 He felt limp with the tension and aches drained from him, with Derek’s heat seeping into his bones and though he could still feel the warning buzzing in his chest, his head urging him on and away from there, he mostly just felt tired. It swept over him as fiercely inevitable as the ocean dragging him under, just for a little while.

 

 It drew back like a tide on the turn, however, all too quickly.

 

 His eyes flew open and he jerked a little the way he always did when he drifted for a few moments, startled into awareness with the certainty that he had no idea where he was. He found himself on his side, one hand resting near his face, his slightly curled fingers partially blocking his view of where Derek lay right beside him. His snout was only a hairsbreadth from Stiles’s hand, his eyes piercing alpha red against the grey woods and his black fur.

 

 Beautiful, Stiles thought, the whole world still fuzzy and ethereal from sleep.

 

 Blinking slowly, blearily, Stiles flexed his fingers, tracing Derek’s cold nose and the dark muzzle around it. He prodded his forefinger along Derek’s jowls, smirking at the snort he received when he prodded at his teeth. He smoothed his fingers up, across Derek’s brow and toward the furry ears that pricked a little in anticipation of his touch. Still, before his eyes, even as he reached for them, the dark shape of the wolf morphed into Derek’s, resting beside him, brows furrowed in something like confusion as his hand shot up, catching Stiles’s wrist.

 

 “Hey, c’mon, you gotta let me tweak one,” Stiles chuckled, but his mirth dispersed into the silence at the proximity of Derek’s so very human face. He swallowed, searching that intense stare, still as piercing red as before, as if Derek were using his wolf vision to see deep into Stiles’s soul. He had Stiles’s hand captive between their faces, his breath drifting over his slightly parted lips to kiss Stiles’s fingers. The sensation drew Stiles’s gaze to his mouth, which Stiles’s fingers automatically followed, brushing against the unexpectedly soft skin, making Derek start a little in surprise at the touch. But he didn’t draw back.

 

 Slowly, slowly, the grip on Stiles’s wrist loosened. Derek’s fingers slid up the back of his hand, hesitating just for a breath before curling around Stiles’s own. So close, they were so close with their fingers entwined and Derek’s red eyes flickered to shining hazel green. It was the same colour that clung desperately to the leaves as autumn descended, only more.

 

 “Derek,” Stiles murmured hoarsely, eyes on Derek’s lips again, the touch of their fingers tentative and innocent but more. So much more. His heart was pounding in chest like a stampede of horses, his own breathing almost ragged. It was too much almost, to be this close, to be touching however chastely after the vast chasm of loneliness. It wasn’t anything like the way he’d imagined being wrapped in his dad’s arms again, squeezing him so tight he thought he’d break both of them. It was radically different. His head was spinning, he felt light-headed and dizzy even though he was lying down and he felt hot all over. Not like a blush, not from arousal just from the simple touch of their fingers. So much. Everything and yet nothing and he was almost hyperventilating from the force of it.

 

 “ _Derek_ ,” he muttered again, almost panicked this time, feeling as if he were being cast out onto tempestuous tides in a lift raft with not even an oar to give him a glimmer of hope.

 

 Derek’s fingers gripped his a little tighter and only then did Stiles realise he was shaking. He wanted to lean forward, to chase Derek’s breath with his mouth and he didn’t know why or what would happen if he did, if he was reading this all wrong because it’d been so long. And even before, when he’d been among others, it’d never felt like this. He was sure he would have remembered this.

 

 “Hey, I’m here,” Derek said gently, so gentle, everything about him so soft in spite of the façade he tried to maintain. It was like Derek was whispering _‘you’re not alone anymore,’_ without ever saying those words themselves.

 

 Stiles drew in a sharp breath that was almost a dry sob and he squeezed his eyes shut just as Derek’s face crept closer. There was a cold, almost damp press against his nose and when Stiles cracked his eyes open again, Derek’s eyes were staring back at him longingly from the wolf’s face. Derek whined softly, a sound of comfort, Stiles thought.

 

 With a sigh of exasperation, Stiles offered, “God, we’re a pair, huh?” There was a tad of self-deprecation in there but Derek only huffed in answer. Groaning, Stiles rolled reluctantly back into an upright position, leaning back against the tree. He tipped his head skyward. His heart was still fluctuating erratically and that weird, too-hot disorientation was still consuming him, like a sudden rush of adrenaline or _something._

 

 Derek waited, studying him, looming over him, Stiles supposed which should have been unnerving, giving his hulking, supernatural shape, but Stiles wasn’t afraid. Or perhaps he was, but not of the wolf.

 

 After a while, Derek inclined his head to snatch up his clothes in his teeth and slipped behind the nearby bushes. To save Stiles’s sensibilities more than his own, Stiles thought, climbing reluctantly to his feet, his body aching more than it had before his catnap but devoid of the exhausted haze at least. He could carry on until they were out of the woods. He slid his hands into the pockets of his hoody, fingers latching onto the red string he’d stowed inside and fiddling awkwardly as Derek stepped back into sight, buckling his belt.

 

 The path down into the valley was hard going. It was steep and the further down they went, the more the old trees seemed to stretch up and up, towering over them with great ominous canopies, shedding their dead leaves almost like a warning. Stiles shuddered, pulling his hood up around his head and neck to try and stave off the chill.

 

 He caught Derek side-eyeing him as they moved and glared. “Dude, if you offer me your jacket I will hurt it,” he promised darkly, because werewolf or not, Derek had to feel a chill without the fur coat of the wolf around his skin. Between them, species was irrelevant in terms of comfort and survival. They were equals here, he didn’t want Derek to forget that. He thought he’d glimpsed enough of the way Derek worked since they’d met to recognise someone who went without simple comforts far too often, to help others or to get a job done quicker. Perhaps both?

 

 That was the thing about the end of the world, it rendered everyone equal, no one more or less deserving than the other. He wanted Derek to see that. In his mind he no doubt knew that logically, werewolves weren’t less, didn’t deserve less. But to have been treated as less, as worse than that, as a plague upon humanity, having seen other wolves play up to that, it must have wounded Derek, even if he was too proud to ever say as much.

 

 Stiles’s back and legs were on fire by the time they reached the more level terrain of the valley below. His entire body throbbed from the steep climb down and his breathing was uneven. In the distance he could see the dark entrance to the cavern, the wooden board that had been crudely used to block off the mines hanging limply from the frame, rotten away by time.

 

 As Stiles stared at the remains, from a distance the large splintered edges looked like wasted fingers clinging to the framework. It was as if the demons within were trying to claw their way out.

 

 Every hair on Stiles’s body prickled and his spine tingled ominously. He felt more than saw Derek’s head twist in his direction, slow, as if he were unwilling to make any sudden movement, any alteration to the pattern of their constant steps forward.

 

 “You sense something.” It wasn’t a question and Derek’s voice was heavy with foreboding, like he knew that though the words were the same, it was different this time.

 

 Stiles’s mouth was dry, too dry for words. All he could do was nod in answer. It felt wrong, the very air he breathed felt wrong and yet it had nothing to do with the mine, menacing though it was. It was all around them, like the trees themselves were spies for the darkness.

 

 “You feel it too?” Stiles all-but whispered.

 

 Derek gave a barely-there nod.

 

 Stiles felt his insides quiver then clench as if gripped by a giant fist. His lips parted to ask Derek if he knew what it was, if he recognised it in a way other than the general feeling of _‘run’._

Stiles swallowed. _Run. Run. RUN!_

Before he could even form words, movement bolted through the tree line. Stiles and Derek both jumped, whirling back-to-back on instinct, eyes searching the trees. Movement again. Blurs too fast for Stiles to see.

 

 “Derek?” His voice shook and rose on the second syllable simultaneously. Behind him, Derek stiffened and when Stiles twisted his head for just a moment to glimpse his expression he saw shock. “Derek?”

 

 Derek looked blindsided. But even as his lips worked to answer, the sharp sound of an arrow cut through the air, milliseconds before it struck the ground just in front of their feet. They leapt apart. Another arrow whistled, narrowly missing Stiles’s shoulder. He scrambled, running even as his mind screamed. It didn’t fit, it didn’t make sense. Hunters were shooting at them, but it didn’t feel like the hunters all around them, bolting through the trees beyond his range of sight. It wasn’t them that made him feel this sense of dread, tet they were here. They were here but they weren’t the only thing out there.

 

 It was like a flash across his mind, a feeling, an instinct so clear it was almost like an image. Sharp, pain in the shape of fangs for biting. A flash of haunting light in the darkness.

 

 Derek’s hand seized his arm, jerking him sideways just as another arrow slammed into the ground. This one burst on impact, sending earth and leaves spraying across the clearing, pelting into Stiles’s back as he lurched after Derek’s momentum, making a beeline for the trees in the opposite direction of the arrows. Another struck. An explosion that tore into the earth, sent it raining on them in a thick black downpour.

 

 “Derek!” he cried out, voice ragged as he ran, because it wasn’t right. There was something else, there was something else besides the hunters and he couldn’t say it. He had to tell him, he had to…

 

 An arrow rented the air with only a sharp whistle of warning, striking the tree nearest them like a thunder clap. Stiles and Derek skidded to a halt, leaves flying upward under their feet as they scrabbled for purchase, staring up as above them, the tree groaned. Its bough cracked, splintering outward on impact from another arrow, lurching toward them. Stiles’s breath caught and he staggered backward, still staring upward for a millisecond, unable to tear his gaze away even as he fled.

 

 The tree descended. It took forever to fall and yet offered nowhere near enough time to run. Stiles’s legs felt like they were scrambling beneath him without getting him any further as it fell and fell. It tore downward like a hammer on a groundspike, driving them toward the cover of the mine.

 

 Another arrow struck, bursting just to the side of the entrance. Whether trying to drive them away or drive them in, there was no time to wonder.

 

 Stiles darted inside, even as his entire body screamed in negation at the move. Derek threw himself inside after him, threw himself into Stiles, sending them both flying into the dark _just_ as the tree thundered down on the entrance, sending the withered wooden supports and tumbling down around them.

 

 Scrambling out of the way, Stiles’s fingers dug into the cold, hard walls of the mine. The ground rumbled outside, overhead. The aftershocks of the tree caving in the entrance slowly, slowly dwindled, fading into nothing more than echoes. The more they faded, the more aware Stiles became of his own heartbeat, his own ragged breath in the claustrophobic darkness, in the tomb they were trapped in.

 

 “Stiles.” Derek’s voice was hoarse from his rapid breaths and Stiles _felt_ him move somewhere close by. But his panic had already reared its ugly head. He swore he could _feel_ how stale the air was with each sharp inhalation. He shook his head, as if that would shake the sensation loose. His fingers curled uselessly against the walls. He squinted his eyes shut because staring around at the blackness only made it worse. He was sweating, _shaking_ , choking on every nauseating breath.

 

 “Can’t get out,” he gasped.

 

 “Stiles–”

 

 “We’re trapped!” It was almost a gasp as it left him, the sound squeezed out of him through his constricted throat and lungs. Derek seized his shoulder, yanked him round so he flailed in the darkness. He felt Derek’s breath on his face, but even the exact confirmation of his presence was kept from him by darkness. He swore he could already feel his eyes straining to find shapes in the darkness only even if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d like what he saw.

 

 The air felt thinner, he swore it. His heart pounded, as if he were still running outside. It was stale. Cold. He stared straight ahead at where Derek’s face was and wondered if he could see anything of him.

 

 “Can you see in the dark?”

 

 “Better than you can,” Derek murmured, squeezing Stiles’s shoulder firmly before easing his grip a little, smoothing his fingers down across Stiles’s arms. “I can see enough.” His voice held some urgency, some shakiness but it was soft and soothing even still. When Stiles started to glance around, breathing still hard, Derek’s hands caught his face between them. He was close. Stiles didn’t have to see to know it. He could feel it with every fibre of his being.

 

“Hey,” Derek said, almost gently. “There are other ways out of here. You’re the one with the map, remember?”

 

 Not like they could see it now though. Stiles tried to shake his head but Derek was still holding him, still practically breathing his air in the dark. “They could be caved in even if we find them.”

 

 “At least one is open, I can smell the air,” Derek said, with a consoling, urging voice that seemed to both attempt to calm him and get him moving. Just as Stiles’s lips parted to argue, Derek cut him off. “A normal wolf wouldn’t be able to see in the pitch black, they need at least a little light, even if it’s not enough for humans to see by.” There was a conspiratorial edge to his tone now and he leant back a little but still kept hold of Stiles’s face. “But a werewolf can.” At that moment, Derek’s eyes glowed faintly, a mix of the alpha red and the way a normal wolf’s eyes might in the dark. But there wasn’t any light to reflect. Not even a little.

 

 That thought process, the way his naturally inquisitive brain frantically grasped for every reason or logical purpose made his heartbeat slow at least, distracted him. Stiles licked his lips, mind focussing on that lack of sense in what Derek had said, rather than the difference in the air, the way his pulse thudded in his neck.

 

 “How?” he managed, head pounding. He could hear muffled sounds from outside but that wasn’t where the danger was emanating from.

 

 “It’s not just light. Our senses are more than a human’s they…they can converge, come together to build an awareness of our surroundings.” The more Derek spoke, the easier it was to hear him over the pounding in Stiles’s ears, as if his voice, softer than his exterior suggested, where anchoring him to his skin, or deeper, perhaps. It was holding him to a place beyond fear. A place where thinking was possible again even if everything wasn’t magically okay.

“It’s not a crisp image like what you see in daylight. It’s like a spatial awareness, like walking through your own house in the dark and just knowing where everything is.”

 

 Stiles’s brow furrowed. “But you’ve never been here before.”

 

 “That’s not what I…” Derek audibly grit his teeth. “It’s hard to explain some things. But trust me, okay? I can get us to the exit.” Even as he spoke, he urged Stiles to his feet. Stiles accepted the assistance, still staring into nothingness, trying to see if he could make out anything of Derek in the blackness. How could he make him understand?

 

 “Derek, there’s…” Stiles swallowed as his fingers curled tight into the fabric of Derek’s shirt. “I saw something, _felt_ something out there and it wasn’t the hunters.” And somehow he knew just knew, “There’s something in here with us.”

 

 “I thought I saw something in the trees,” Derek murmured, almost whispered in a voice that sounded rigid with forced calmness. “We were down wind but I thought I saw…” His voice was so quiet toward the end that it was almost as if the abyss had whisked his words away.

 

 He wasn’t sure he wanted Derek to confirm what he’d seen, because if it was what Stiles had thought, he wasn’t sure what that meant, that they were alone here in the void.

 

 Disquiet crept up the back of Stiles’s neck. He felt like a child trapped by fear in the darkness of his own room, waiting for his parents to come in and turn on the light. There were all manner of things that could be lurking in the dark and he’d seen enough of the world since it’d ended for his imagination to be a dangerous thing. He tightened his grip on Derek’s shirt. Derek’s hands slid up to cover his. He could almost picture what Derek’s expression looked like.

 

 “You know that thing you do, where you talk a mile a minute and cover every topic of conversation known to man?” Derek asked quietly a twist of wry, amused fondness in the air. “I need you to not do that, just until I get us out of here.” He gave Stiles’s hands a final squeeze. “Hold onto me.”

 

 With that, Derek released him, just for a moment but even that brief time alone with nothing to ground him in the abyss made him feel like he was spinning in space. The sound of twisting, cracking bone was unnerving, even though he knew what was happening, what Derek looked like when he shifted. He was almost light-headed with the way he was breathing, realising that perhaps the reason Derek didn’t address his belief of what danger lingered here in the darkness with them, even after he’d waxed lyrical about Stiles trusting his instincts, his spark, was because he knew. He knew and they had to get moving. They couldn’t afford to let panic consume them.

 

 Stiles felt the shape of Derek standing over him, the heat of him in his wolf shape noticeably, familiarly different, hotter. He reached up without thinking, without needing to consider his options and let his fingers curl in the fur of Derek’s neck. Forcing out a long, steady breath, he tried to school those that followed into something calmer, more controlled.

 

 He remembered all the times his dad had squeezed his hands when he’d felt like he might lose it in the past, had talked him down from ensuing panic and held him when his nightmares had felt too real. The feeling that spread through his fingers on touching Derek’s warmth was similar.

 

 His brain reeled, trying to remember what it was called. A rush of oxytocin or lack of norepinephrine? He’d written an essay on it once, instead of the actual assigned biology homework. His dad had been reluctantly impressed too. His teacher less so. He just knew he felt calmer, stronger, knew it felt possible to escape this dark place they’d been trapped in. He could find his resolve. He could panic when this was all over, when they were out of here, when he could see the sun above him and feel the air against his face. But not now. Now he had to get moving.

 

 He swallowed reflexively as he tried to focus his racing mind long enough to form words. Even though he thought letting his mind wander may be a kindness to his sanity in that moment.

 

 “You know me well enough by now to know I’m clumsy enough when I _can_ see where I’m going, right?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse. There was a soft, agreeable huff. Derek nudged his shoulder with his flank, forcing him to side-step as he kept upright, kept a grip on Derek’s fur. It put him in place so he could easily touch the wall, sandwiched between it and Derek’s body like Derek was a shield. It’d be slow going, he thought, but it could work. He only hoped whoever, or whatever had last walked this path hadn’t left any hazards to trip over, old tools, debris, carts, _human remains…_

 

 Shaking his head a little as if that could clear it, as if that would let him see a path ahead in the emptiness, he squeezed his fingers tighter into Derek’s scruff. He wasn’t alone.

 

 Their every step sounded too loud. His eyes had quickly begun to ache from strain so he kept them closed, balancing carefully between Derek and the wall. Whenever they approached a turn, Derek would squeeze him gently to the wall, but the sensation of reaching for the wall and finding nothing whenever they turned a corner still gave him a jerk of panic every time.

 

 What was it, that feeling, the comfort he got from being pressed between Derek’s heat and the cold wall? He felt safer there, pinned in by him than he did spinning out in the open. There was a promise in the feel of Derek’s muscle and fur under his hands, in the weight of him whenever he leaned a little into Stiles. He wasn’t alone.

 

 Of course his mind did wander, did reach for possibilities he’d rather not consider, images he could’ve done without. He wondered, amongst it all, if he’d not been starved of simple human contact all these years, if this connection would have been potent enough, would’ve given him enough strength to keep his head even when his insides were screaming.

 

 In hindsight, he supposed, it didn’t matter. He was here, Derek was here and it felt good to touch him, to be touched back. It made him feel stronger. The rest didn’t matter. And what if he _was_ attracted to Derek? Was that really the name for the heat in his chest, the sense of safety and trust and strength he got from him, even though it felt too profound for such an inadequate word? If that was what this was, he’d had to come to the end of the world to find it, hadn’t he?

 

 His stomach lurched suddenly, his every muscle tensing at the jolt of unease that ripped through him like static. The air, he swore, had grown a little lighter, though he wasn’t sure if that was his imagination or not. His eyes flew open and he had to blink twice to ensure his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. There was definitely a slither of light ahead, soft and subtle. Moonlight, it had to be. Just a little but dazzling in the dark. So why did he not feel relieved? Why did he feel such a suffocating, crushing sense of doom?

 

 The grip he held on Derek dragged him forward as Derek lurched into faster steps. Stiles stumbled, torn between wanting to dig in his heels and wanting to keep hold of his lifeline in the dark. He wanted to whisper, he wanted to _plead_ with Derek to wait, to stop but his throat was constricted, his lips sealed tight with dread. He couldn’t speak, like something out of a nightmare he was struck dumb and could only follow in Derek’s wake, squeezing his grip urgently, willing him to realise.

 

 Derek jerked to a halt just at the place where the tunnel opened out and Stiles knew it because he could _see_ it, just make it out in the streaks of dappled moonlight that filtered down through the cracks that had opened long ago into narrow but deep chasms in the ceiling. The moonlight looked pure white in the darkness, glancing off the maze of tunnels that opened up around them.

 

 It felt like stepping into a dream, a nightmare Stiles had had before. It was chilling, standing at the crossroads of the mine’s passages with only darkness ahead whichever way he turned. Four directions, four crudely constructed archways and a foreboding radiating from every one of them.

 

 Stiles gripped Derek’s fur tighter, to the point where he was sure he must be hurting him but he couldn’t bring himself to loosen his hold. His spark, the feeling that had kept him alive all this time, it was practically _vibrating,_ not with heat, but with bone-deep cold.

 

 The slices of moonlight splashed cross the walls were like great claws plunging down from the ceiling and reaching for them, waiting to snatch them up. Stiles shuddered. But just as his lips parted to tell Derek as much, Derek’s entire body tensed and bowed, lowering like a beast ready to spring. A low snarl curled over his teeth, exposed to some invisible threat Stiles could feel but not see.

 

 “Derek?” Stiles whispered, loathing the way his voice caught and shook. Derek edged backward, head jerking to study each of the branches off of the crossroads, urging Stiles flat against the wall as he moved. “Derek?” Stiles demanded again, hushed but urgent now, heart in his throat because whatever it was, it was here.

 

 A flash of light ripped through the darkness, crisp, piercing gold eyes that flared with the light before shimmering like cats eyes in the night. Supernatural morphed into something of this earth and yet it was all the more haunting for it. They moved closer, closer, with all the stealth of a predator. Then the predator lunged.

 

 Derek roared, surging up to meet the beast that leapt from the shadows in a clash of snarling fangs. A frenzied yelp tore through the air. Stiles slammed back against the wall of the cave, squinting in the light that was dazzling after nothingness and yet still not enough to see clearly by. Derek was bigger, darker than the creature whose grey fur caught the light as Derek threw it off him.

 

 Derek side-stepped, pacing in front of Stiles, ears and head lowered, spine rigid, body language a screaming warning. He kept himself between the beast and Stiles instead of pouncing, instead of going in for the kill and that’s when Stiles saw the yellow-gold glow in the assailant’s eyes again and knew. He hadn’t come across many wolves that hadn’t had the blue eyes of a murderer, but he still knew what those gold eyes meant combined with that canine shape.

 

 Werewolf.

 

 A haunting, high whine of a howl echoed through the chamber, the only warning before another wolf slammed into Derek, sending him skidding sideways. Both enemies dove for him, aiming for his throat, the smaller swinging off the scruff of Derek’s neck as he reared back to throw it off. Another howl called down one of the tunnels and Stiles’s gaze flew in that direction, only to sweep to the side as another answered from the opposite side.

 

 They were surrounded, the sounds of howling, calling pack rang through the walls and seemed to shake the cavern with their intensity, making Stiles feel like an idiophone still trembling in the aftermath.

 

 The only thing holding Stiles up was the wall at his back and he could scarcely draw breath as he tried to focus, to comprehend the mess of limbs and fangs and claws darting in and out of the streaks of moonlight descending from above. That’s when he realised, reconciled the wildness of the wolves to the moon.

 

 The wolves were rabid, mad with moon-lust, without an alpha, by the look of them. Derek had told him tales in the nights they’d shared, of omegas that couldn’t control themselves after rebelling against the alphas that had turned them against their will in the riots. They were omegas, lost to the moon and there were three of them now, another having leapt from the tunnel. They bore down on him, tackling him at once from all sides and burying him under their onslaught with sharp yowls of pain whenever he tore at a piece of them.

 

 Stiles didn’t think. He scrambled for the crossbow hooked over his back and nocked a bolt into place. He fired, watched as the darker grey wolf, the last to have leapt into the fray, reared back with a screeching howl of pain, the bolt buried in its shoulder. Stiles fired another, piercing the second wolf’s hind leg, making it reel enough for Derek to sweep it off him, sending it flying into the darkness with a thump. The first wolf descended once more, feral fangs burying in Derek’s furry shoulder and Derek howled.

 

 Stiles’s heart was pounding but his hands had never been so steady, his mind never so focussed. He reached for a third bolt but as he did so, the third wolf, the one he’d struck first hurtled towards him. The great hulking shape morphed before his eyes, crunching and twisting sickeningly even as it moved. It morphed into the shape of a woman, all wild matted hair and eyes burning gold in the dark, brow twisted with a semi-change and fangs dripping with Derek’s blood as she descended. She grasped the bolt protruding from her shoulder and yanked it free, tossing it into the dark before raising her free hand, claws dark with Derek’s blood poised to strike.

 

 Another howl, no a _roar_ of outrage and a dark shape ploughed into the woman like a freight train. She skidded across the ground, just into a pool of moonlight and Stiles scrambled sideways, aiming the bow at the beast now towering over him that _wasn’t_ Derek. But the beast, the wolf wasn’t looking at him. It had its back to him, tail pricked, offering its warning growl to the woman who… _paused_ at the sound, at the sight of the interloper, as if she recognised it.

 

 Heart hammering, Stiles kept his crossbow trained exactly between them, unsure which one might move first. Then there was another shriek of a yelp, deafening in the cavern. A body collided hard with the ground and Stiles jerked, ready to lunge across both omegas to get to Derek, but even as the wolf on the ground shuddered and shook with bloody spasms, trying to change back, even as Stiles heard the second wolf who’d been tossed aside by Derek shifting closer, Stiles saw Derek rise up on his human legs just at the edge of the moonlight’s reach.

 

 It was as if time stopped when Stiles caught a glimpse of him, bloody but whole, moonlight glancing off his skin that was clothed only in already healing wounds and dirt. His eyes pierced the cavern, alpha red, his face twisted half way between man and wolf. But he was okay. Stiles was so stunned by his relief of that realisation that it took him a moment to register Derek’s movements.

 

 Derek’s eyes scanned his body across the cavern, confirmed his health from a distance before drifting over the enemies around them. His gaze seemed to get stuck on the dark-furred beast still between them when he froze, went rigid as if he’d been electrocuted. The red glow of his eyes simmered into his less visible green as they widened.

 

 Slowly, Derek stepped forward, legs visibly shaking with the expression of a man whose heart had just been torn out. His face shifted back to the softer image Stiles was more used to as he staggered closer. Stiles’s chest tightened, watching the wolf and the woman on the floor, fingers tightening on the trigger of the crossbow, waiting to put a bolt between the eyes of whichever one lunged for Derek first. But Derek looked more haunted then, more heartbroken stared at the wolf than he ever had talking about anything supernatural or to do with the loss of his family.

_His family._

 

 Stiles lowered the crossbow with wide, disbelieving eyes as he realised, _just_ as the wolf morphed into a more human shape. The woman was slight, small but in a way that spoke of lean muscle, her dark hair falling in a disarray around her bare shoulders as she regarded at Derek with the same broken, disbelieving look.

 

 She stared, she studied every inch of him like she was seeing a ghost. When Derek spoke, it was whisper soft but still deafening in the silence, ricocheting off the walls and reaching up through the ceiling into the heavens.

 

 “Cora?” His voice almost broke on the word. They lunged for each other, collided with all the force of a landslide, locking together in a desperate, tight embrace. Derek’s fingers sank into his sister’s hair and clutched her head close, tucked it into his neck like she was the most precious thing on earth, like he couldn’t let her go. Painted by moonlight in the middle of a battlefield, they sank together to the ground, a dry sob retching from Derek’s throat to mingle with his sister’s heaving breaths.

 

 Stiles felt his own eyes sting and cuffed the brewing wetness from them, feeling like an intruder on the moment. His hands shook on the crossbow and he swallowed hard around the lump in his throat.

 

 “Derek,” Cora gasped into his neck, crying voice muffled by his skin. “Derek, I thought…I never thought…”

 

 “I’m here,” Derek assured her, though his voice quavered as much as hers. He didn’t seem to be able to let her so much as lift her head. “I’m here.”

 

 He squeezed her to him even as she drew back to look at him, her slender hands cupping his bearded cheeks as she studied him up close, searched his face with a teary smile. “God, look at you,” she half laughed, half cried, “you’re all grown up.”

 

 Derek answered with a teary smile of his own.

 

 So had Cora, undoubtedly, if the view of her naked body was anything to go by, Stiles noted uncomfortably. He began to set his bow down to reach for his fallen bag, hoping to find something long enough to offer her and the other werewolf woman on the ground some dignity, but as he did so, the other woman’s head jerked to focus on him, her eyes flared brighter gold than before and she dove for him.

 

 Stiles threw himself backward to avoid her, landing hard on the ground with a wince. He squeezed his eyes open against the pain that bloomed through his body on impact _just_ in time to see the flash of fangs intercepted by Derek’s body. Derek’s head threw back with a snarl of pain that was more animal than human as the woman’s teeth ripped into his shoulder. Cora surged forward but even as she moved, Derek seized a fist full of his assailant’s hair and tore her lose regardless of her hold on him. Blood spraying as he shoved her backward and lowered his stance in warning, in Stiles’s defence, fangs bared.

 

 “Don’t kill her!” Cora cried.

 

 Stiles used the wall to lever himself to his feet, his entire body protesting. He moved toward Derek, but as he reached for him, Derek held his good arm out to halt his movements, keeping himself between Stiles and the feral woman, without ever tearing his eyes from her.

 

 “Don’t kill her, Derek! It’s the moon, she can’t control it!” As Cora pleaded with her brother though, she moved to restrain her friend.

 

 The two other wolves that had been cast into the darkness edged closer, fur streaked with moonlight and eyes searing, mindless.

 

 “None of them can,” Stiles whispered, feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach because _this_ was the danger he’d been feeling, had sensed in the trees, the glimpse that had stumped Derek out in the valley. Werewolves, apparently Derek’s sister's friends and they were about to tear them to pieces.


	7. Melody of Belonging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this year I decided to sign up for my first ever Secret Santa Exchange – two of them! A Sterek and a Steter one. In all my 'wisdom' at my first ever crack at it, I decided to sign up for two at once. I’ve finished my Sterek one ready for the submission date and am now working on the Steter one :) I’ll post to AO3 with my name once the exchange has taken place and everyone’s names are revealed if you’re interested.
> 
> Anyway that was why the long wait for an update, sorry for the delay. I just have half a Steter Secret Santa to write then we should return to our regular scheduled programming. Thanks so much for all your support so far, I hope you continue to enjoy :D

Chapter Seven

**Melody of Belonging**

 The blond woman snarled and lunged at the limit of Cora’s grip on her arms, face trapped between human and wolf, wild with the moon. Stiles gripped Derek’s good arm that remained out in front of him like a shield. The suffocating darkness around the intermittent circle of moonlight above, the wolves closing in, it all filled him with dread but Derek’s stance was set, muscles taut as if he were about to spring into the fray. He was ready to protect him at all costs and he couldn’t help but feel empowered by that realisation.

 

 He couldn’t bear it. He dug his fingers into Derek’s forearm.

 

 “Derek,” he began. The wolves were stalking them in semi-circles, bodies weaving in and out of the streaks of moonlight, eyes glowing eerily whenever they vanished back into the gloom beyond its reach. Back and forth they wove, a low, growling warning constant and echoing through the caverns reaching out around them. One of them reappeared, a little too close for comfort and Derek snarled, baring his fangs until it shrank back a few steps, putting a safer distance between them even as it grumbled with untamed savagery.

 

 “Don’t!” Cora cried out again, even as she struggled to hold her female friend back. Cora tossed her onto the ground and pinned her with her full weight as the she-wolf started to writhe and claw and roar. “Derek!” Cora pleaded, “They’re all omegas, _bitten_ omegas. I’ve been trying to teach them to keep control on the full moon but without an alpha–” She cut off as the woman beneath her swiped at her face so hard it snapped her head to the side. The blow left her stunned momentarily, just long enough for the woman to throw her off.

 

 “Derek!” Stiles’s voice was rough and raw with desperation and at the sound of it, the other two wolves slunk closer again from the opposite side.

 

 Derek’s worried gaze turned from his sister, to the she-wolf, to the two approaching and for just a heartbeat, as he turned his face, Stiles glimpsed the panic there. It was gone as quickly as it came. Derek wrenched himself out of Stiles’s grip, the sudden jerk forward drawing the female’s attention toward him, sending all three feral wolves bolting toward him, away from Cora. They made a beeline for Derek who still stood like a human shield between them and Stiles.

 

 Stiles floundered, scrambling for his crossbow without taking his eyes from Derek but even as his fingers clutched at web-covered, damp stone fruitlessly, Derek threw his entire body forward and the roar that wrenched from his throat had the whole cavern shaking with its ferocity. Stiles glimpsed his claws, thought he saw Derek’s jaw practically dislocate with the feral force of the sound coming from him, the sound that had all three wolves freezing in place.

 

 Derek’s body was heaving slightly with breathlessness but he rose as confidently as if he were facing down three tame show dogs instead of werewolves. He stalked forward, slow, steady, keeping his eyes roving between each of the beasts. The third wolf to have joined the fray still wearing its wolf skin whimpered at Derek’s approach, head twisting submissively, body lowering at Derek’s roar. Stiles swore he saw its tail swishing slightly from side to side and Derek responded, murmuring a quiet growl, leaning in.

 

 Stiles’s breath caught, lips parting in protest as Derek put himself close to the wolf’s furry neck, to its head, to its _fangs_ but as if he’d heard Stiles’s mouth open, Derek’s hand rose, silently gesturing for him to remain quiet.

 

 Slowly, slowly, the wolf gave a low, almost hurt whine and slumped to the ground, partially inclined to his side and casting his eyes up balefully at Derek as he slowly rose to his feet. The wolf thumped his tail once and Stiles’s breath caught. Submission, the wolf had recognised the alpha’s demand and offered compliance and in return his connection to his new alpha had calmed the moon lust within him. Derek had claimed him somehow, welcomed him as pack and shared the control he had under the moon somewhat.

 

 After a moment, the wolf’s body trembled with the shift until a naked, curly-haired young man about Stiles’s age was left curled on the cold ground, all long limbs and submissive disposition. Derek nodded slowly.

 

 As Stiles watched, he felt the same awe he used to when watching the _Discovery Channel_ as a kid. It was an astounding feat of nature that rendered him frozen in time for a beat, that was until the other two wolves shifted forward, testing their luck, not grounded by the same connection the man on the ground had.

 

 Derek grumbled warningly but they only crept forward faster and Derek couldn’t make that connection to both at once. Stiles made a split-second rash decision. He seized a fistful of crumbled rock from underfoot and tossed it in the direction of the female, drawing her attention to him. She snarled and dove, just as Stiles rolled to the ground out of the way. Dimly, he recognised movement, heard Derek’s familiar growl and Cora’s voice calling out. Testing his theory, Stiles darted toward the man still lying quietly on the floor. The naked man was watching the chaos around him warily, as if he were ready to skitter back. He was grounded to a calmer instinct, to his alpha’s command to keep himself, but not able to process logical thought with the moon so ripe in the sky. The man jerked as Stiles skidded to his knees beside him, but offered a cautious growl of warning as the female closed in on Stiles.

 

 Stiles was no wolf, but Derek’s scent had to be all over him, the way Derek had stepped between him and danger was clear even to a moonstruck wolf and the man almost slithered out of his crouch, forcing Stiles to defiantly not look at his naked body. As Derek struggled to subdue the larger wolf enough to get close, to connect, the freshly initiated young man leaned up on his arms and haunches and bared his teeth at the female, stopping her in her tracks.

 

 She cocked her head, perhaps dimly recognising him, for he must’ve smelled of her too. She hesitated and it was long enough for Derek to turn to face them again, for the cavern to fall quiet and leave the large wolf, now a tall, dark-skinned man staggering slightly, eyes glowing in the dark. The female stared between each of them, whining in confusion, eyes constantly coming back to the dark man like a long lost dog reunited with its beloved owner, uncertain but yearning.

 

 “I know,” Derek said, voice hoarse. He had his eyes on the female, even as the dark man came up behind him, as if he knew he could be trusted now and Stiles got it, pack. He was initiated, Derek could feel his presence like an extra limb this close and with the moon this potent. His hand gripped Stiles’s shoulder though, even though he didn’t look away from her. “I know he’s yours,” he gestured with his head toward the dark man beside him. “And he’s mine now and so are you.”

 

 Such basic, raw language, possessive and simple and easily misinterpreted if you didn’t know exactly what Derek meant, what he was doing. He was claiming them, so that he would be their alpha as readily as he was Cora’s and contrary to all the tales the humans had told, wolves didn’t create pack hierarchy with violence, not really.

 

  _It’s all body language,_ Stiles remembered Derek telling him once. It made a strange sort of sense, given how Stiles and Derek moved around each other without words nowadays, revolved instinctively around each other’s every step as if in orbit. They were hyper-aware of the other’s body language and movements, just so in tune with each other that they could get dressed or sleep in the small space of the _Camaro_ without much incident.

 

 That thought was more comforting than any other. It felt warm. It felt like connection. It felt like home.

 

 Stiles knew that was what the two male wolves had felt when Derek had brought them into the invisible claim of pack, of family. Knew that was the feeling that spread through the woman’s bones as she tried to recoil when Derek reached for her. She flinched and Derek’s fingers caught her shoulder, not violently, not menacingly, just grounding, rooting her in place as the moon tried to take hold, like a seed sprouting and digging deep to find a place to belong when the winds of the world tore through.

 

 There was a terrifying moment where Stiles could almost _see_ her eyes flash with the thought of ripping Derek’s hand off. Stiles wondered briefly if Derek could grow back an entire arm, but then she seemed to just droop in his hold. Derek slowly drew her in by his grip, but Stiles could tell it was more guiding her, steadying her along a path of her own making. She exposed her throat when Derek sniffed and brushed against her neck and Stiles’s throat tightened when Derek released her, standing still as she surveyed him with curious, puppyish eyes. She brushed against him in return, like sharing scents, acceptance, the way a friendly cat or dog might and then the dark skinned man stepped closer to do the same.

 

 Stiles tried not to let his discomfort show, because though everyone except him was as bare as the day they were born, there was nothing sexual about it. It was sort of beautiful, he supposed, surreal. Cora joined them, stepping close and it was like a multiple embrace without the final closure of arms, all nonverbal and body language and soft sounds that Stiles knew weren’t human. Derek was at the centre of it all, like the sun with the planets orbiting around him, looking and gently touching them all in turn, comfortable as if lost to the moment and knowing this was right.

 

 When the young man who had warily defended Stiles rose to join them, Derek cocked his head and smiled. “Hello, Isaac,” he said, with a smile one reserved for family.

 

 Stiles remembered. Isaac, Cora’s boyfriend from years before.

 

 The man grunted, evidently recognising him, but unable to articulate, to fully function until the moon had waned. To his surprise, when Derek squeezed Isaac’s shoulder, he leant into it, like a dog starved for touch, or perhaps a directionless omega, hungry for the comforting direction of an alpha. He was clearly so damn grateful to have that security. Derek let out a little sound of pleased surprise.

 

 “God,” Derek breathed as they gave him a little breathing room, still watching him. He spoke like a man coming down from a headrush. “I don’t know how to be an alpha.” He sounded lost and Stiles made an abortive move forward, wanting to go to him but feeling like an intruder on the moment occurring just out of his reach. Derek’s gaze fixed on him nonetheless, aware of his every breath as ever and Stiles felt suddenly see-through, as transparent as glass, bare for all of them to see.

 

 Derek was the one to move, he peeled himself away from the sister he’d been searching for all these years, from his new pack and reached for Stiles like he could see him slipping away. He cupped one side of his neck, then his jaw, eyes glinting supernaturally in the diminutive light.

 

 “You okay?” he breathed.

 

 Stiles nodded, not trusting his words, when all he could think was _, am I yours too? Like they are? More than they are? Less?_ He didn’t want to be a wolf, but not for the first time he wished he had the same intuitive sense of what Derek was thinking. Sometimes after years without human contact he felt like his instinct for human behaviour was way off, untrustworthy, like he wasn’t sure if the things he _thought_ he read from Derek were true or a reflection of his own hopefulness.

 

 “Maybe we can get the werewolves back in wolf shape or into some pants though, huh?” he attempted, his voice just a little high and Derek snorted.

 

 Stiles hand hovered without touching over the bloody gashes across Derek’s torso and neck, wincing at the particularly nasty one on his shoulder. “I wish I could take your pain,” he murmured distantly. Derek caught his hand, shaking his head with a tired little smile.

 

 “I’ll heal,” he promised, with his voice still raspy though soft as if his words held a much more intimate meaning than Stiles could fathom. As Stiles reluctantly drew from Derek’s grip to pick up the bags, he thought he saw Cora watching him curiously and diverted his gaze quickly.

 

 He might’ve been socially awkward before his isolation, but he’d always _liked_ people, enjoyed the throng of crowds and the buzz of busy lives going around him, observing and interacting with different cultures and ways of thinking. Now, after being starved of it for so long, he felt only wary and unsure how to talk to people, least of all the long lost sister of the man he felt so much for he couldn’t even find the words to quantify it.

 

 

 It turned out the alpha’s call could ground his betas but not force them into action. Isaac seemed more susceptible to Derek, perhaps because they had a history but the other two, who had been strangers to Derek before now, would have to build a stronger connection over time. Still it kept them grounded, kept them from ripping Stiles and Derek to pieces, even if they did start every time Stiles got to close.

 

 They walked ahead, in the end, with Derek, Cora and Stiles behind and the cold soon drove them back into their wolf skin. Along this path there were the same deep fissures in the ceiling, enough for Stiles to walk carefully with a hand on Derek’s proffered arm. Cora’s evident awareness seemed to go unnoticed by Derek, though Stiles could practically hear her mind working.

 

 “How come you managed to control yourself so well when these guys couldn’t?” he asked, before she could speak, chatter his automatic defence mechanism, even now.

 

 He saw Cora turn gaze toward the wolves ahead, just out of Stiles’s range of vision in the dimness. “I was born this way, same as Derek, so it’s different for us. I’ve been trying to teach them but I’m not an alpha.”

 

 Stiles nodded, mostly to himself. “And so what Derek did back there, that sort of mutual trust display thing, that’s all it takes to bind an omega as your beta?”

 

 Derek scoffed softly. “Not ‘ _all_ ’ it takes. It’s deeper than that it’s just…wolves don’t communicate with words. We said plenty, just not in a way that you could hear.”

 

 “It’s body language, like instinctive understanding,” Stiles surmised and felt Cora’s attention on him again, as silent and observant as her brother.

 

 “How long have you two been on the road together?” she asked, a frown audible in her voice. When Stiles mumbled something about ‘ _a couple of months’_ she made a sound of acknowledgement, before turning her attention forward again. “I’ve never seen a human as interested in us the way you are, or watch an exchange between our kind the way you watched Derek initiate the others. You watched like we’re something beautiful or fascinating, rather than something to be feared.”

 

 Stiles didn’t know what to say to that.

 

 “There’s only one other entrance clear,” Cora said after a long silence, broken only by the eerie sounds of the wolves ambling through the dark ahead. “We’ve been coming up here to hunt for a while, get reserves. The miners had a well nearby that’s still good. We were camping out in a house in the town but the hunters caught us up here in the woods a few days ago and we haven’t been able to get back to town. They’ve been looking for us this whole time.”

 

 There were so many questions hanging between them, so many things Derek and Cora needed to say to each other after so long apart, but it would have to wait.

 

 Even in their moon addled state, the wolves knew the way out, apparently able to sense it as readily as Derek was. They followed them quietly but then, even Stiles caught the change in the air. It wasn’t fresh. Everyone stopped.

 

 Smoke.

 

 Ahead of them, the wolves shrank back, as if realigning with the ranks for strength in reaction to their instinctive fear. As tactile as ever, Derek instinctively grasped Stiles’s forearm, eyes flashing red as he stared ahead. He sniffed, then cocked his head as if listening. Stiles _just_ caught the way his face twisted in what little light shone through the lessening cracks.

 

 “What is it?” Stiles asked, voice trembling, his throat already feeling irritated, eyes sore from the subtle streaks of smoke licking at his sinuses. They couldn’t be far from the source. From the entrance. His stomach dropped even before Derek answered.

 

 “Gerard,” Derek muttered darkly, “he’s trying to smoke us out – or just to death, I’m not sure he cares which.”

 

 Stiles felt his blood run cold, shivering as he remembered Derek’s words. _It’s a game._ It was all a game. They would die in here and it was a game to Gerard, a dalliance, a matter of pride. Derek had only just found Cora, Stiles would never see his dad, would never get to tell Derek… _anything_ and it was all just a game.

 

 “Stiles,” Derek said, as if sensing his rising panic and Stiles nodded, trying to control himself, even though he knew they were trapped, he tipped his head up to stare up through the cracks in the ceiling. The rock was thick above, he didn’t think even werewolves could rip through it. But no sooner had he thought that, then a shadow fell over the slices of missing ceiling. Someone was cramming something into the gaps in the rock far above, even Stiles could tell and an odd, sickly feeling pervaded his senses.

 

  _The spark,_ he thought, _my spark,_ just as Cora cried out.

 

 “Get down!”

 

 Derek’s fingers dug into him and he threw Stiles forward, all of them hurtling toward the smell of smoke, just as the ceiling exploded where they had been standing moments before. The walls shook, the ground trembled and the caves behind them crumbled in, echoes of further explosions sounding further back, where Gerard’s men were taking no chances.

 

 They were trapped, unable to even retreat into the darkness of the caves. The opening of the mine was just ahead, thick smoke billowing through it, almost blocking out the moonlight as it reached for them like ominous curling fingers, like death itself summoning them on.

 

 Just inside the entrance they stopped. Danger roared in Stiles’s ears as ferociously as the fire that rose and rose with every second, closing off their means of escape. But the feeling didn’t stem from the flames. “Gerard is out there,” Stiles choked, dragging his hoodie up over his face. He could sense it. Gerard was watching his little game play out.

 

 Cora snarled and lunged forward. Derek made a noise of panic but before Cora could even try her luck with the fire, she rebounded back. It was as if she’d hit an invisible wall. She skidded back across the ground with a wince, her face smeared with soot and sweat as the heat swept over them.

 

 “Mountain ash,” she muttered darkly, even as she spluttered.

 

 Stiles saw Derek’s sweat-dampened face twist into a grimace.

 

 “It’s what Laura and Peter caught Kate lying around our house to try and trap our family inside before she set the fire,” Cora managed, “it would’ve trapped us inside as we burned alive.”

 

  _Just like now_ , Stiles’s mind supplied as he squinted against the smoke. The wolves may have been able to survive the fire, but could not cross, whereas Stiles could cross but would likely burn. He winced, trying to remember something, anything from the fire safety lectures at school, but it was as if the smoke and panic had formed a wall he could not cross to grasp at any useful memory in that moment.

 

 He felt Derek’s presence at his side, turned his head to watch through stinging eyes as Derek stared at the building flames and smoke like a man defeated, frozen in time by his anguish as hell rolled over and over without end. Stiles watched as Cora, face twisted with the same, anguished resignation, slid her fingers between her brother’s and Stiles’s heart broke.

 

 It was all a game, some sick game. Gerard was making them choose between slow and painful smoke and heat and the fire.

 

 Stiles didn’t realise he’d even moved until Derek was gasping out a choked, agonised sound that was almost his name. The heat grew as he staggered almost blind toward the entrance. He winced as his palms snagged the rougher parts of wall when he put them out for balance, sliding through the grime and thick covering of spider webs. But he didn’t stop. He just knew.

 

 The spark, he supposed.

 

 He coughed as he found himself blinking blearily into the moonlight and smoke as he reached the entrance. He didn’t look at the fire, didn’t search it for a weakness, he just felt it, he knew what to do.

 

 There, at the edges of the semi-circle of fire, he saw it. A sheet of old, rusted corrugated iron, left over from the miners’ work lay half enshrouded in earth by the entrance. He seized it, the metal hot from close proximity to the fire but not yet untouchable and he threw it over the weakness in the line of flames. It was enough. He leapt. He landed in a mess of limbs on the over side, a foot or so from the flames and scrambled over onto his back to kick at the sheet of iron. It was enough. The line was broken.

 

 “Shoot him!” Gerard’s voice, shrill with rage cut through the sound of the fire licking at the earth. Stiles only rolled onto his belly and ducked his head, just as five bodies burst out of the gap in the flames. The fire snapped ferociously at them as they cut through it, filling the air with the smell of singed flesh and fur.

 

 Stiles’s head jerked up to see four wolves flying toward the men who’d been watching from a few feet ahead, their screams filling the night, but then Derek was hauling him to his feet and away from the flames, swatting furiously at his clothing, eyes alpha red and panicked. Some of it had caught his clothes, Stiles realised, feeling oddly detached from the moment as Derek ensured no smoking patch would take light.

 

 “You’re okay?” Derek gasped, as if the fire and the danger and all the rest didn’t matter as long as Stiles was unharmed.

 

 Stiles only nodded breathlessly, hands coming up between them, shaking with adrenaline as he grasped Derek’s arms that were holding him so tightly he could almost _feel_ his flesh bruising. A shot ripped through the air, a gunshot and both of their heads jerked to the side, to where Isaac and the other two wolves had torn into the hunters, the sprays of blood splashing across the grass like some abstract painting to convey the chaos.

 

 Another hunter had Cora on the ground, his boot at her human shaped throat as he nocked a bolt to his crossbow. Derek lunged, tackling him to the ground with a hard thud. At the same moment, Gerard stepped sideways out of the cover of trees, where he’d moved when the wolves had broken the line of mountain ash. He had a shotgun in his hands and the barrel was trained on Derek.

 

 Stiles didn’t cry out, didn’t scream in negation, there hadn’t been time for even a breath. He dove forward, seizing the barrel of the gun with both hands and jerking it up so that the shot that ripped through the air missed Derek by inches. Gerard snarled, caught off guard, apparently not realising he was that close or unscathed enough to move that quick, he was strong though and jerked to try and loosen Stiles’s hold on the gun.

 

 Stiles threw himself forward with all he had, pinning Gerard to the tree he had hidden behind like a coward and jammed the barrel of the gun up under his chin. Gerard sneered even as his face bled red, went blotchy with lack of breath. In a moment of uncontrollable panic for air, he released the gun to swipe for Stiles’s face. The blow glanced off Stiles’s jaw, making his face throb but it wasn’t a full connection and it was easy with only one of Gerard’s hands on the barrel to wrench the gun from him entirely. Without thinking, Stiles cracked him across the head with the butt of the gun and the old man crumpled to the ground.

 

 His hands shook in the silence that fell.

 

 “The fire!” Cora cried, her desperation cutting through it as easily as it had fallen. She grabbed another corrugated sheet from the dirt nearby, part of what once had been a storage shed, apparently, throwing it onto the flames to try and stifle it, kicking dirt over it to stop it from spreading to the trees. Stiles watched, disconnected as she and Derek managed to get it under control, as the three wolves licked human blood from each other’s muzzles.

 

 Absently, he wondered if it was because the spell of the initial line of mountain ash had been broken that they could cross it now. He wondered if that was just how a mountain ash barrier worked, once a human had broken its intended purpose or because of the spark that sang through his veins.

 

 Stiles swallowed, looking down at the gun in his quivering hands and steadied himself as he unloaded it. He pocketed the bullets, before searching around for something to tie the old man’s wrists. When Gerard was secured, Stiles scrambled with still shaking hands to help Cora and Derek. The flames seemed to spit and hiss at him, snap like the teeth of wolves at his approach but as he helped Cora to smother the last of it nearest the trees, it simmered in defeat. He tried to ignore the way Cora eyed him, wondering if, like Derek, she’d know what he was or if it’d be something they had to talk about when the world stopped with the insanity.

 

 

 The night was waning by the time they finished burying the bodies of the fallen hunters, by the time they started their weary, shakyn trek back up through the valley. Derek had swung Gerard’s limp body over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and seemed to be taking it all in his stride in spite of his exhaustion. It was werewolf stamina, Stiles supposed because he felt shattered. The adrenaline had faded about half way through the burial of their enemies and he was now running on steam. He braced himself against the cold sweeping through the trees now at the late hour, loathing how far behind he was falling.

 

 When it had been just him and Derek it had been hard enough to handle, but their partnership had balanced out the things Stiles’s body wasn’t capable of. Now, among the pack, his weakness was more obvious than ever. He couldn’t keep up with a pack of wolves.

 

  He couldn’t make eye contact when he eventually staggered to a stop, sinking down to his backside in the dirt with his back against the nearest tree. He squeezed his eyes shut against the exhaustion, the self-deprecation swelling in his constricted lungs and drew his legs up to his chest. “Just need a minute,” he breathed out, tilting his head back against the tree, eyes still closed when he felt Derek kneel beside him, sans his distasteful cargo.

 

 Stiles’s throat felt raw and his eyes sore from the smoke earlier. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting and against the purple dawn creeping up around them.

 

 “Hey,” Derek said softly, gripping the back of his neck gently, “are you alright?”

 

 Stiles nodded, even though he wasn’t, not really. He was holding them back. He didn’t fit. He’d watched men die. He hadn’t seen humanity in so long and he’d just watched them die, it wasn’t something he’d ever gotten used to, even after all he’d seen in the last decade or so. There were three wolves and Derek’s sister sitting across from him, wearing some of Derek’s cleaner clothes from their backpacks. His bones were chilled right to their core the shock was setting in.

 

 All of their faces were streaked with grime and soot, the three moonstruck wolves with blood. He nodded again, as if to convince himself, because he had to be alright, for a while longer at least. He just had to, even if he didn’t belong with those hunters, those _humans_ back there, or the wolves around him now. Even though he was starting to worry he didn’t belong anywhere.

 

 “Here,” Derek offered, passing the water bottle he’d just drunk from to Stiles, who drank greedily. The simple action helped him to take charge of his senses a little. When he felt calmer, he reached up to wipe the thickest smudge of soot from Derek’s cheek.

 

 “Man, you’re like something out of the _Commando_ movie,” he mused.

 

 Derek snorted, apparently content that Stiles was well enough for now and snatching the water bottle back for another swig, amusement and relief soaring with affection in his eyes, glittering in the low light.

 

 Across from them, with the three wolves curled up around her, Cora watched their exchange, their casual tactile closeness in silence. Stiles shifted slightly, still unnerved at the proximity of others after so long. He wondered how he would handle the bustle of the settlement, when they got there.

 

 When Cora shifted to take a swig from the bottle of water, the wolves moved too, staring around them as if assessing their surroundings. The larger grey wolf, Boyd, Cora had said, shifted back onto his haunches, studying the sky as if he could sense the sunrise, sense his autonomy returning to him. The others seemed restless too, in a way that was more than just leftover adrenaline from everything that had happened.

 

 Their restiveness was easier for Stiles to understand, to focus on than Cora’s presence, not because of who she was but because people were just hard now. They were almost like something ethereal. It felt like Stiles could blink and he would find himself dreaming again. Even in the moments they did feel permanent, Stiles felt like he’d forgotten how to interact on a basic level. When it was just him and Derek, it hadn’t mattered, but now it wasn’t just them. His world was widening every day and the more it did, the more Stiles was forced to acknowledge his feelings for Derek.

 

 Cora’s eyes moved to his, as if sensing his thoughts and Stiles cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “How did you meet Derek?” she asked, her voice soft just like Derek’s.

 

 Stiles couldn’t help himself. “I hit him over the head with a crossbow and then he saved me from a mountain lion.”

 

 Cora blinked at him in surprise and Derek shook his head with a tired smile, dragging his hand over his face.

 

 They talked in soft tones for a while, tired, each of them still a little shaken. Cora spoke of surviving out in the wilderness with Isaac, moving from remote location to remote location, how they’d stumbled on Boyd and Erica a couple of years ago, omegas just like them. Somehow it was reassuring to see the same disbelief in Cora’s eyes, the same sign of a person not quite daring to hope for more, for the promise of a home, security and warmth. She felt the same way he’d felt when Derek had first told him his dad was still out there.

 

 Stiles winced as he stretched, his back aching from his collision to the floor. His head pounding. He felt utterly shattered, exhaustion creeping higher and higher in his bones. His eyes were sore from the smoke and tiredness and he cast his glance through the trees, trying to remember if they’d come this way, if they were anywhere near the _Camaro_ , anywhere near the place he and Derek had dozed off not long ago. He remembered the closeness, the feeling of Derek’s warmth heating him, his fingers touching Stiles’s lips, his breath on his mouth from scant inches away.

 

 He felt Derek move before he saw him. His presence was like soft, prickling heat over his slightly chilled, tired bones. His spark almost hummed but in a way that was pleasant and not the wary throb of a stranger or enemy’s presence. It trilled like a bird as Derek’s broad fingers gripped the back of his neck again, squeezing firmly to draw the discomfort away.

 

  _“A few seconds for me versus hours for you,”_ Derek had said once, when Stiles had protested at Derek taking his discomfort from rough sleeping or from his injuries when they’d first met. Stiles wasn’t arguing now, if only because contact with this man was pretty much addictive at this point. He wanted to grasp Derek to him and not let go but now his sister was right there, there were others right there and the fact that they could see their affectionate, casual comfort made him realise that it wasn’t just a simple connection of kindred spirits. It was so much more, something he wasn’t even sure if he had a name for.

 

 A frisson of awareness moved through the wolves, a prickle through the hairs on their backs, like a wave moving over them, then Cora, then Derek, each of them unconsciously shifting their gazes eastward. The moment was almost otherworldly, their faces cast in delicate, almost ghostly pre-dawn light and a perfect stillness untouched by any sound other than the wind.

 

 Stiles jerked in surprise when Cora let out a howl that sounded more animal that her elfin features looked capable of. It was a long, high sound that pierced the sky just as the sun crested, high and full of longing, or perhaps quiet hope. As the sound started to wane like the moon, Isaac chimed in, then Erica, then Boyd, until their howls were falling and cresting over each other like the waves on a rip.

 

 Cora shuddered with the change, until she sat alongside her packmates as the wolf Stiles had glimpsed in the cave. She and her pack looked like beautiful feats of nature now, instead of wraiths from a nightmare.

 

 Movement caught his attention, a soft warm grip over his fingers. He turned his head to see Derek still looking at the light glistening across the rich brown-red of the treetops, but with his fingers covering Stiles’s on the ground between them. Stiles didn’t know why Derek wasn’t joining them, if he was worried about Stiles’s reaction to such a visceral, _‘animalistic’_ act, embarrassed, or uncertain he was welcome with how new his place was among his pack, even as an alpha. He didn’t carry the self-assurance of one, after all, he was never born to this.

 

 Stiles also didn’t know if the group were howling to protect their pack, to make any potential enemies think their combination of harmonies were that of a larger, stronger pack, if they were doing it for solidarity, for the comfort or just for the hell of it. Whatever their reason, Stiles, acting on impulse, tipped his head back and howled.

 

 It was a loud, whooping noise completely out of touch with the melody of the wolves, his vocal cords unable to make a sound like theirs, but the wolves howled with him regardless. It felt like the wild sound had lifted the weariness from him, the feeling of being an outsider, the reservations about their presence instilled from years of solitude. He felt the beginnings of belonging stirring there, an thought of his dad and hope.

 

 A lower-pitched howl sounded beside him, not as long as the almost mournful cries of the others, more frequently sounding and deeper, the deep bass of the alpha in their symphony.

 

 Stiles was breathless and laughing by the end, by the time the howls finally quietened and when Stiles looked over to Derek in the softly buzzing silence, Derek’s eyes were bright with the first light of day.

 

 The wolves slunk over, curling up close around them like a puppy pile so that Stiles was more surrounded by warmth than he could ever remember being. It was like a signature beneath their beautiful composition of togetherness.

 

 Though they must have regained their autonomy, if he recalled Derek’s intermittent explanations about the effects of the moon on bitten wolves correctly, but they, Cora included, seemed to prefer their wolf skins. Perhaps it was out of habit and comfort after all the years of being at the mercy of the wilderness together, or simply to defend against the cold.  Stiles didn’t mind either way, it was easier to react to them as wolves, simpler when they were enjoying their base selves, acting on only their deepest, most base desires and therefore freeing him to do the same.

 

 Stiles flopped on his back like he’d done in his own backyard with his mother in their flowerbeds, staring up at the sky. It was miles away from the darkness of the mine, from the perilous void where he’d almost lost the ability to ever go home, to find home, find his dad. Where he’d almost lost Derek.

 

 He drifted with the wolves his kind had feared holding his warmth in and with Derek’s fingers curled at the inside of his wrist like an intimate kiss.

 

*

 

_The cold of the mines made his breath leave his parted lips in great swirls of white mist as he panted for breath. He gasped like a landed fish yet he was completely frozen, useless in the dark, lost to the void. It was black, all he could see was the fog of his breath. His heart hammered a violent tempo against his ribcage, a horrifying, dreadful orchestration that swelled and swelled without a peak. He couldn’t breathe._

_His fingers twitched in the black earth as he stared up at the narrow slits in the cavernous ceiling far above, his only chance at escape. They grew further and further away as he stared up at them, or was he the one that was falling away?  His fingers dug in the earth again but it tumbled away like sand, his last grip on reality._

_Stiles cried out but no sound came, only a vast echo of nothingness, the same silence of the mines. He twisted his head this way and that just able to make out the tunnels all around him, so many forks in the blind path through the darkness that all seemed impossible. He couldn’t do it._

  _Distant, mournful howls sounded, not the hopeful tones of the pack but lost, sorrowful sounds of everything he had to lose._

_Suddenly, fingers locked around his and his head swiped to the side, no, upward in the directionless nothing to find the distant light of the world above silhouetted around Derek. It was black around him but he could see every inch of detail on Derek’s face, see his panicked look as he reached for Stiles. His face drew gaunt and pale, stretching and stretching and his eye sockets fell empty and lifeless like those of the bone men._

_At that thought, he saw the bone men merge out of the darkness, long claws where their fingers should be sinking into the flesh of Derek’s shoulders and dragging him back. Stiles screamed with a gaping, soundless mouth, watching as everything he loved in Derek burned out of his eyes and the fire of the bone men glowed from within._

_Stiles’s eyes squinted shut against the horrifying image, squeezing so hard his eyes ached._

 

*

 

 When his eyes opened, he saw a milky orange, overcast sky, startlingly bright against the darkness of his lids. He jerked up, watching as Derek’s head twisted in his direction. He stared about their makeshift camp wildly. Derek was close beside him, Cora standing, shrugging on one of Derek’s longer shirts again while the others hunched, still in their wolf skins like guard dogs about to pounce.

 

 Cora squeezed her brother’s shoulder and stalked toward the old man struggling violently on the ground to right himself with both his legs and feet bound. Stiles saw the dark bruising against his face, the dried blood on his mouth and knew a moment of dazed satisfaction. His nightmare faded into the background of his thoughts and left only unsettled anxiety behind, made worse by the sneer on the old man’s face as he looked straight at him.

 

 “You chose these monsters over your own kind,” Gerard breathed darkly.

 

 Stiles didn’t even blink. “The only monster I see is you.”

 

 Gerard spat on the ground to his side, whether to rid his mouth of the coppery taste of old blood from where he’d been struck or just to show his distaste for his captors, Stiles wasn’t sure.

 

 “There are so few of us left in the world,” he began wearily, “there aren’t enough of us to be separated into werewolves and humans anymore, or humans and supernaturals, whatever. We’re all just people who survived something awful and are hoping for something better.” _And hopefully going somewhere better_ , his mind supplied, thinking of his dad and the home he’d built that Stiles had only ever heard Derek talk of like it was a dream.

 

 Stiles sat up a little straighter. “The bone men swallowed us all up regardless of what species we were. They don’t discriminate and neither do I. If you can’t see that then you’ll end up like everyone else.”

 

 Gerard snorted. “You sound like my son.”

 

 Beside Stiles, Derek tensed. “If there were more men in the world like Chris Argent then maybe it wouldn’t have come to this.”

 

 Gerard tilted his head with interest. “Still alive, is he?”

 

 Derek’s nostrils flared.

 

 Gerard’s eyes glittered with twisted amusement. “Does he still keep to _the code_?” He gave a short laugh. “There is no ‘code’ anymore, only survival and those too weak to do what it takes.”

 

 Cora folded her arms across her chest, no less fierce with her legs bare and in her brother’s shirt. “It’ll be pretty lonely when you betray everyone around you and they’re all dead because you’ve only looked out for yourself,” she said scathingly.

 

 With a twisted impression of a smile, Gerard leaned forward in his bonds as if whispering a great secret. “It’s that kind of soft thinking that gets a pretty little thing like you killed, sweetheart.”

 

 Derek lunged. A snarl of pure, seething hatred tore from his lungs with visceral force as he seized Gerard’s bound body and hauled him up off his feet, fangs bared, eyes flaring alpha crimson. “Tell me why I shouldn’t rip your throat out right now?” he snapped, his words clumsy around his fangs but no less menacing for it.

 

 Stiles staggered to his feet.

 

 Gerard laughed breathlessly, “Because your little pet human is watching.”

 

 Stiles raised an eyebrow. “This little pet human must’ve hit you pretty hard if you’ve already forgotten he did it pretty willingly.”

 

 “But you didn’t kill me,” Gerard managed as Derek lifted him higher, hands clenched into fists in Gerard’s clothes under his chin so he struggled to breathe. “Go on, _alpha,_ kill me,” Gerard goaded.

Derek’s face morphed with the semi-transformation of his wolf blood, disfigured by his clear hatred and for a moment Stiles wasn’t sure which direction this would take. Derek may have been a predator, but his heart wasn’t all that different from Stiles’s. He could kill a man to save his life, to save someone but staring a man in the face and killing him where he stood in a moment of clear-headed thought was utterly different.

 

 “I lost _everything_ because of you,” Derek all-but spat, voice low and rough and frayed with such pain that Stiles felt his throat close up at the sound of it. “I should rip you apart and leave you for the crows.”

 

 Beside Stiles, Cora shifted, jaw set tight in the same way Derek’s did. “I’ll do it if you don’t,” she growled darkly, slender fingers curling into clawed fists and weeping blood from their shaking bed in her palms.

 

 “No,” Derek breathed, grunted as if he’d been punched in the gut. He curled his fists tight under Gerard’s chin, shaking with the effort of reeling in his rage. “He’s the only animal here.” He dropped Gerard like a sack of coal, letting him crumple hard at the impact with the ground and stepped away from him with disgust. “You’ve been living in an illusion world where you’re above everyone else but your life isn’t worth anymore than mine just because I’m a werewolf.”

 

 There was a brief moment where Derek’s eyes cut to Stiles, so brief Stiles was sure he hadn’t realised he’d done it. “You’re the kind of man that’s watched the world fall apart around him and has learned _nothing._ But I have.”

 

 Gerard chuckled darkly, rocking upright clumsily but with no less of a derisive smile to his crinkled face, as if he still had the upperhand. “You’ve learned, have you boy? You’ve learned since that time a flash of skirt was all it took to blind you to someone infiltrating your defences?” He pushed his bound hands flat on the ground to lever himself up with his legs still tied. “Pity you hadn’t learned quicker, maybe your _pack_ would still be here.” He spat the word ‘pack’ like it was the filthiest curse and Derek went rigid, Cora jerked but Stiles struck. He kicked the man hard in the side, making him crumple like a beaten pup and the cry of pain wiped the look of superiority from his wretched face.

 

 Whoever Stiles had been years ago, whatever kind of boy his parents had raised, however much he knew it was wrong, he knew a moment of satisfaction, even as he staggered back from the impact, shaking all over. Because ever since he’d laid eyes on Gerard he’d started to remember the darkness, the cruelty, the vileness that humanity was capable of, things he’d forgotten in his solitude and it was all too clear to see how the world had collapsed in on itself.

 

 The blood was pounding in his ears so ferociously, his gaze so fixed on the man cupping his side on the ground that he didn’t realise Derek had hold of him until he was shaking him slightly. Stiles’s eyes locked with Derek’s and he realised he was talking.

 

 “…with him when we get back. Like civilised people, not like the dogs he thinks we are.” Derek shook him a little more firmly when Stiles’s enraged gaze wandered to Gerard again and he was met with the intensity of Derek’s conviction. It was then that Stiles remembered just how long Derek had dealt with people like Gerard for, how he’d helped to build the last potential civilisation in the continent. He’d had time to grow beyond this burst of loathing for people like this, to cope with it, even though he shouldn’t have to. Stiles still had a way to go.

 

 The rage dwindled in him like a flame being blown out and he nodded as he deflated, shaking from the aftermath of it. Derek squeezed his shoulder a final time and stepped away. Stiles turned in time to watch him vanish through the trees. He saw Cora watching him, caught the way her eyebrows rose at him, though he couldn’t tell if she was alarmed, annoyed or impressed. Perhaps, like him, she was just wondering which of them should go after Derek.

 

 They were caught in a precarious place, with Cora’s lost time with her big brother and Stiles’s unnamed connection. In the end, she sighed and gestured with her chin impatiently in Derek’s direction, a clear suggestion to follow.

 

 It was on the tip of Stiles’s tongue to ask her if she’d be alright with their prisoner, As if she’d read his mind, she flashed her eyes in a would-be warning and started to shrug off Derek’s shirt as she reclaimed her wolf’s fur to chase away the blue tinge starting at the edges of her fingers and toes.

 

 He found Derek stooped over a thin stream not too far from their stopping point and splashing water across his face and hair until he was drenched and shuddering. “Hey!” Stiles called out, rushing over to him. “Derek, its freezing this morning. What are you doing?”  


 Derek ignored him, diving his hands in to cup chilly water, splashing it across his face. His motions grew more frantic the longer Stiles watched, his skin pimpled from the cold as water trickled across the tight muscles of his shoulders and back.

 

 “Derek!” Stiles cried and at last Derek stopped. He remained bowed over though, hands braced, white-knuckled on the bank as he stared hard into the water that remained. He didn’t say anything. The longer he stared, the longer and thinner the silence stretched, the more uncertain Stiles grew. He swiped his tongue over his dry lips as anxiety prickled through his chest.

 

 “Derek,” he murmured, voice softer with contrition. “I…I was out of line. I don’t know what happened back there I just–”

 

 “He made you angry,” Derek almost whispered, still not looking at him.

 

 Stiles drew in a sharp breath. “He made me fucking insane, Derek,” Stiles replied honestly. “The way he looked at you all, the way he talked about you and your family, not just now, but before, the lengths he’s willing to go to, to get rid of you all. It’s beyond simple elitism it’s…” His face twisted, there wasn’t even a word for Gerard’s cruelty, his insanity. “I’m sorry.”

 

 At last, Derek looked at him, turning his head just enough so that he could do so, but not moving in any other way. “Because you were angry for me?”

 

 “Because I let him get the better of me and showed myself to be every bit as bad as he was,” Stiles protested, even though he wasn’t really sorry, even though it’d felt good. It wasn’t even as much justice as Derek deserved, the only reason he was really upset was because he didn’t want Derek to think…what?

 

 “You’re ten times the man he is, Stiles, you’re…you’re everything. Everything I said, it’s something I’ve been trying to face all this time, back at the reservation but I’ve learned most of it from you.”

 Stiles felt his insides jerk as if he’d missed a step, clenching in a thrilling mixture of anticipation and uncertainty. The atmosphere made his face flush even though his breath still furled out in wisps of mist on the chilly air. It was the way Derek looked at him, the way his voice went warm and soft and intimate, as if every insignificant word were a lover’s secret. At least that’s the way it felt to him. The soft lines around his eyes, the rough scruff of his beard, it just made him want to see every sunrise with this man. The idea that the vibe he was getting from Derek might all be in his head was almost as terrifying as the thought itself.

 

 Staring at him in awe for a long moment that stretched out in the crisp morning air, Stiles parted his lips but didn’t quite manage to express either the awe or the question that hovered on the tip of his tongue. Derek had liberated him from loneliness and so much more and he couldn’t see how he’d taught or offered Derek anything.

 

 Derek kept his gaze on him though as he swept the worst of the water from his face and reached for his discarded shirt and jacket. Stiles watched him as he redressed, watched the droplets clinging to his dishevelled damp hair catch the light like crystals and he got it, even in his uncharacteristic speechlessness. Derek had washed away the tension, the hatred, the overwhelming heat of anger Gerard had instilled in him in that water and the strength it had taken to do that made him even more beautiful.

 

 Stiles moistened his dry lips. When Derek seemed to register his staring with a tilt of his head, Stiles cleared his throat and sank down beside him as casually as he could manage. “How do you do it?” he asked, fingers curling instinctively around the familiar, comforting thread of red string in his pocket, that somehow worked around his busy fingers as they spoke. “Keep your head when someone _looks_ at you like that, acts like it’s normal to treat one life over another?”

 

 Derek looked over at him, taking a drink from his cupped hands, the moisture clinging to his beard and fingers as his thoughts visibly worked across his features. He stared out into the trees as if he were seeing the world lying beyond them, remembering the way it used to be, when his family still shared it with him.

 

 “When the Argents outed us as ‘beasts’ to our hometown and we lost some of our pack in the riots,” Derek began distantly, “My uncle wanted to rip them all to pieces, burn the whole town on our way out. He wanted to show every one of them who they’d messed with, exactly who had ensured no other supernatural creatures had infiltrated or destroyed their town like so many others. But my mother stopped him. She said that if we acted in a monstrous way, we may as well be the monsters they accused us of being, that we had to be better than that.”

 

 Derek’s mouth twisted into a stunning, fond, bittersweet smile almost lost in pensiveness and Stiles felt his heart thud a little faster at the sight. “She was a good alpha. I can only ever hope to be like her, but I have to try.” Derek turned his head to meet his eyes at the kick in his heartbeat and Stiles quickly glanced away, focussing intently on the twist of string between his ever-moving fingers.

 

 “I’ve never met anyone like you.” He’d travelled so far from home and been witness to so many things but seen so little of people. Derek had seen the best and worst of humanity, of the world, and he still wanted to be a part of it, for his mother, for the pack he lost. “Your pack protected your hometown, protected _Beacon Hills_ just like you protect the settlement,” he said thoughtfully, winding the red string round and round as he spoke, mesmerised by the frayed edges. “Like you protect me.” His voice, his words, the moment was almost lost in the quiet.

 

 He blinked when Derek lowered himself to his haunches in front of him, his eyes bright as he studied Stiles’s mouth, then his eyes, then drank in the rest of his face. When Stiles looked back to the string in his grasp, Derek’s fingers covered his to still the motion, so that he had no choice but to meet his gaze again. Derek hooked the tips of his fingers in the loops wrapped around Stiles’s own. A charge rushed through them where they touched and when Stiles’s lips parted around words, Derek’s eyes dipped to them again. His fingers tightened in the tangle of thread between Stiles’s fingers and he reeled him in so close that Stiles could taste his breath. His eyes fluttered. So close. So _close_.

 

 “Can I?” Stiles breathed, because what if the basics of human contact and interaction had vastly changed since he’d last wanted someone like this? Had he ever wanted someone like this? It’d been so long and his body ached, yearned for more of the touch holding him close and yet shook with the intensity of it all the same. There was no room between them for anything, not even a hairsbreadth of space for misunderstanding now, surely?

 

 Derek didn’t answer though, his eyes seemed locked on Stiles’s mouth, on every freckle, mole and flaw up this close. Derek’s thumb grazed the ridge of scar tissue bisecting one side of his face and Stiles’s thoughts stilled, because he’d almost forgotten about his scars. There weren’t many mirrors in the world the way it was now, and the way he looked had ceased to matter back when he’d thought he was all alone in the world.

 

 The blip of uncertainty as to how his scars may be received were a reminder that he wasn’t alone anymore, a reminder of just how so much had changed, but that uncertainty was short lived. Derek stared at him and it did matter and yet it didn’t, because Derek drank him in like a man half-starved and he found him not wanting in the least. Stiles’s busy thoughts must’ve shown on his face, because Derek’s thoughtful expression merged into a breathtakingly soft, adoring look and his fingers splayed to cup Stiles’s entire cheek.

 

 “Stiles?” Derek said, oh so softly.

 

 “Yeah.” It wasn’t a question, it was an assent, an agreement, an exhalation of utter, giddying relief. They were on the same page. Derek edged closer so that when he whispered his next words, Stiles felt the movement against his mouth more than heard the words.

 

 “Let me?”

 

 Stiles’s hands flew up, tearing free of the bonds of the string to grasp at Derek’s neck, his fingers curling tight and clumsy and needy in his damp hair. Their mouths touched tentatively once, then twice, as if afraid pressing more fervently would break the intimacy between them. Their noses brushed together as they hovered between a third brush of lips. A stray droplet of water from Derek’s damp forelock dripped down the length of Stiles’s nose to catch on his mouth. The cool globule felt like an icy lick across his mouth, flushed hot with Derek’s breath and proximity. The little gasp that he sucked in seemed to break the spell of hesitation and their mouths bumped together at last.

 

 Stiles felt like a man submerged without chance to draw breath, except Derek’s heat was worth more than air. He was close, so close, arms gripping at his shoulders and scrabbling inelegantly at his nape from below, pulling him in tight and his closeness made Stiles numb to everything but him. It was a clumsy thing. They parted enough to gasp for air but no more than that, locked close, nuzzling together in an extended kiss when their mouths could not.

 

 He licked his lips absently, nervously, shaking with the intensity of such closeness, tasted Derek’s breath on his lips and Derek jerked, as if electrocuted at feeling the movement so close to his own. His nostrils flared, fingers curving around the column of Stiles’s throat, cupping it as if it were a wonderous thing. His thumb caressed his collarbone while his gaze searched Stiles’s soul through his eyes.

 

 Derek caressed the hollow at Stiles’s throat reverently, his own eyes bright with so many heated emotions. He drew Stiles’s mouth to his again and Stiles was torn between melting and taking as readily as he gave. Their mouths undulated more fervently together, tongues touching, trading little gasping groans. Stiles could feel himself sinking into him and wanted to fall forever and forget the world.

 

 Derek was a searing heat in a world of cold loneliness and it felt like a brand wherever he touched.

 

 They tumbled sideways into the damp leaves, feverish and grasping, hungry for more than sex. It was a need for confirmation of a connection they’d both felt blooming like a bud into a rose, or perhaps an equally red blood stain on silk. It felt as powerful, as striking and as beautiful.

 

Stiles’s mouth caught the corner of Derek’s, his cheekbone aflame with desire and irritated by Derek’s beard. Derek twisted his head to nip and suck at his scarred jaw with equal need. His lips traced the scar that cut across his flesh, old now from time spent healing alone where nothing mattered. Derek mattered though and Stiles wasn’t alone anymore.

 

 Stiles gasped as Derek’s beard scraped his earlobe, the roughness soothed by a hot, flickering tongue and before it was caught between blunt teeth.

 

 Then he froze. He went rigid with the cold blast of unease that ripped through his body like an explosion of icy water. At the same time, Derek tensed and they drew apart, eyes wild with dread because they’d both felt it, something bad. There was a wrongness in the air like the fizz after a lightning strike. Stiles watched a frown draw tight between Derek’s brows.

 

 “Move!” Derek gasped out, flying back and dragging Stiles to his feet. Stiles staggered at the sudden movement. He’d felt the wrongness, the warning buzz in his bones that he couldn’t identify, but clearly Derek knew what it was.

 

 “What?” Stiles choked out, head still fuzzy with arousal and everything else. “Derek, what?”

 

 But before Derek could answer, a sound like the ground bursting open and flying up to meet the sky tore through the forest. The birds erupted from the trees and covered the sky, an echo of the stampede back in _Salvada_. Derek tilted his head, visibly testing the air and then dread drew his expression down.

 

 “Hunters,” he breathed, “more hunters.”

 

 Gerard’s laughter filled the air as they skidded back into camp, the sound cracked and chilling in its madness.

 

 “Do you think I didn’t have a contingency plan?” he chuckled with cruel satisfaction. “Did you think I didn’t have scouts that would come looking for me if I didn’t maintain contact? I didn’t survive the end of the world to be outsmarted by a bunch of rabid dogs and their misguided human bitch.”

 

 Another roar of explosion, closer than before, it made the ground shake and Stiles steadied himself on Derek’s arm as he looked around. Derek jerked his head in Cora’s direction, four wolves staring back at him. Some sort of understanding seemed to pass between them, then Derek dove for Gerard.

 

 “What – what are you doing?” Stiles demanded. “If we have to get moving then let’s _leave_ him here.”

 

 Derek grunted as he hauled the old man over one shoulder. He didn’t seem heavy to Derek, only awkward in his writhing awkward weight. “If we lose sight of him now we’ll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives,” he said, jerking his chin toward the trees. “The _Camaro_ isn’t far now. We have to get moving.”

 At that moment, a sharp whistling rush cut through the air. An arrow struck the nearest tree, exploding on impact and sending debris flying, the sound echoing through the clearing with deafening resonance. It was the same as before, they were being herded, rounded up like diseased cattle. Stiles’s arms flew up to cover his head from the flying bark and smoke, the blow missing them by a margin.

 

 “Run!” Derek cried, a word that he’d barked at Stiles in just that way more than once since they’d met. Stiles caught his eyes and hesitated. Derek took a lunging step forward. _“Run_!” he demanded, the urgency breaking his voice. Stiles ran, caught up in the whirlwind of the pack’s flight, carried with them.

 

 The rain of explosions followed them as they bolted. Detonating arrows sent earth flying up toward the sky like great sprays of the ocean crashing against a cliff-face. He sped into the cover of trees, ducking his head as another arrow struck one nearby, bark splintering off in the blast. Stiles cried out as a flying shard of splintered bark sliced across his bicep, sending a sharp sting through his arm but he didn’t stop.

 

 His heart pounded in his chest, his breath burst through his lungs in sharp, sudden gasps, muscles screaming as he pushed them to their limit. He heard the sound of the wolves running behind him, dodged the hunter’s fire. He ran and ran until his legs hurt but all he could see were trees he couldn’t recognise.

 

 Then, with despair thick in his throat, he caught sight of them. Cora, he thought, fur as black as Derek’s as she flew alongside him, up ahead of him, then Erica, Boyd and Isaac, coming up either side of him like pilots flanking his movements. He wasn’t as fast as them but they never drew away entirely, never left him in their dust, only fanned out as if to draw off the fire. He heard the roar of an engine, the hunters giving chase and knew he wasn’t quick enough but in that brief, giddying moment, he realised he was running with werewolves, like their pack and he felt like he was flying.

 

 His lungs were on fire by the time they reached the place where the trees let out by the miners’ cottages. He skidded to a halt as he watched the wolves peel back, whirling around to see them darting back the way they’d come. Derek was nowhere to be seen. He started after them, confused and shattered but Cora staggered out of her wolf shape, fangs tainting her words and eyes flashing with supernatural desperation as she spoke.

 

 “The car!” she panted, “get the damn car!”

 

 He hesitated, eyes on the trees as she vanished like the others, as the roar of whatever vehicle carried the hunters drew closer. Derek was back there, Derek was back there somewhere and he was standing there useless. For just a brief moment he’d known belonging of the like he had almost forgotten and it was slipping through his fingers as swiftly as it’d come.

 

 A sharp, whining snarl of pain tore through the air, then another, punctuated with human cries, sounds like gunfire. He took an abortive step forward, then thought of the car. He set his jaw against the bitter taste of helplessness and turned.

 

 He felt sick with exhaustion, nausea thick in the back of his throat as he staggered toward the little run down garage they’d stowed the _Camaro_ in. He hauled open the rickety wooden garage door, wincing at the screeching sound, but then he paused, straining to hear beyond the blood thudding loudly in his ears. Silence. Nothing.

 

 All was still, eerily quiet in the blood-hued dawn. Then, suddenly, an explosion echoed in the trees, followed by a haunting howl.

 

 Stiles felt his stomach drop. He stumbled hurriedly towards the _Camaro_ , digging the keys out of the bag he’d snatched up and slamming the car into reverse. He tore around the little row of houses, rolling down the windows as he sped toward the largest gap in the trees he could find. His skin was dripping with sweat, muscles quivering from exertion but his bones _vibrated_ with awareness of the danger. He drove as fast as he dared through the trees as they closed in and in, then slammed on the breaks at the piercing howl that ripped through the air.

 

 He waited. There was no sound but the low grumble of the _Camaro’s_ engine idling. His fingers tightened in a white-knuckled grip around the steering wheel. His breath evened out to a more manageable level the longer he sat there but his heart pounded so hard he thought his head might explode or he might pass out.

 

 His mind reeled. Derek had been right behind them, he was sure of it, even with Gerard. Those shots, those screams, both human and wolf. What had happened? Gritting his teeth against the unbearable cold quiet of the world he recognised all too well, Stiles felt, in that moment, entirely alone, lost. After the camaraderie of Derek’s company, of the presence of the pack it felt like he was standing on an isolated mountain top with only snow and empty chasms as far as he could see. Drifting like one of the fall leaves with no way forward and no way back.

 

 He _felt_ movement just to his left before he saw it. The pack ambled quickly into view as humans, flecked with dirt and blood but walking under their own power, battered but whole. They made a startling sight, like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie or cannibal horror.

 

 Stiles was out of the car before he could even process the thought that drove the action.

 

 He rounded the _Camaro_ and found himself tearing toward Derek, who was the only one of them clothed and whose entire right side was smeared with dark patches of blood. Stiles was called toward him on an instinct to wrap his arms around him, to anchor him in place but he stopped short when he reached him, skidding to a halt at the sight of Gerard’s unconscious, wounded body still hanging over his shoulder.

 

 Stiles felt the sickly feeling ebbing slightly and studied Derek, lost for a beat on how to act now everything was laid bare between them, especially given the circumstances. In less than a day his world had changed, had lurched forward and halted and sped off again more times than a rollercoaster and his mind was reeling with it all. He felt dizzy with it where he stood.

 

 Derek’s eyes were so green at that moment, piercing him in place like a butterfly in a glass case. Whatever Derek saw in him though, he didn’t tear his gaze away as he loaded Gerard’s limp form off onto Boyd’s broad shoulders. The old man was bleeding heavily, Stiles noted and didn’t so much as twitch at the handling.

 

 “He so wasn’t worth risking your life over,” Stiles chided, feeling nauseous again at the thought of nearly losing him, of trying to process everything that had happened. The dark possibilities were maddening.

 

 “He’s not,” Derek murmured absently, as if his mind wasn’t on his words, “but doing the right thing is.”

 

 Another beat of listless wondering on Stiles’s part, of not knowing his place in the ever-changing tides and then Derek broke the emotional impasse. He reached forward, wrapping Stiles in his arms and squeezing him tight, as if Stiles were the one that had nearly been lost. Every one of Stiles’s weary limbs protested at the firm embrace, though his chest swelled and his heart pattered readily at the associated safety, warmth, comfort, even as the sky began to weep soft, drizzling rain.

 

 He felt like standing there, in Derek’s embrace, he could be washed clean of everything that had happened, of the panic and the terror and the death. It felt like he could find the strength in him to start again without any confusion this time as to where he belonged.

 

 Derek pressed his nose ever so slightly into the apex of his jaw, just under his ear as if that were the space that best confirmed Stiles was safe.

 

 Stiles breathed him in.

 

 “Let’s go,” Derek whispered gently. He drew back with clear reluctance and they approached the car as Boyd closed the rear passenger door, apparently having managed to squeeze Gerard’s unconscious body in the back somewhere.

 

 Feeling the night, the previous day, all of it catching up with him, Stiles felt slightly spaced as he slid into the front passenger seat. “Where are you all going to fit?” he managed, confused as Derek took the wheel.

 

 Cora, naked and unashamed turned her rich brown eyes on him and spoke. “We’ve got enough ‘go’ left to beat you back to the den,” she offered, with weariness and the lasting roughness of the moon unable to quell the amused twist to her lips.

 

 Stiles turned to look at Derek as the others changed, stalked ahead at a pace quick for a human, but perhaps slow for a werewolf. Derek looked ashen, bloody but seemed to be healing and he directed the car after the pack more capably than Stiles probably could have at that moment. Stiles dragged a hand over his grubby face. “Did you get them?” The hunters, whoever it was that had tried to take cull them like cockroaches.

 

 “Yes.” Derek’s tone was clipped, guarded, uncertain.

 

 “There won’t be anyone to come after us?”

 

 Derek hesitated, kept his eyes on the road as he guided the car just behind the pack’s progress, letting them lead the way. “No.”

 

 Stiles exhaled shakily. Relieved, tired. “Good,” he murmured and didn’t hesitate to reach out and cover Derek’s hand on the gearshift. Their fingers curled together and Derek’s thumb brushed against his.

 

 


	8. Symbiosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter I think is a little slower, a recovery of sorts from all the action in the previous chapters and perhaps the calm before the storm to come. So sorry for the delay, as you know I was working on secret santa gifts (as well as being a back-up gift writer x2) in December and then I was tackled by the nastiest flu bug I’ve ever come across. I’ve never been so feeble and useless in all my life. But I’m back now and looking at my plan we have around 3 chapters left! So if there are any requests for anything you want to see don’t be afraid to let me know, I welcome your suggestions or requests.  
> Also, it goes without saying but please don’t tamper with generators or electrical equipment, unless you’re an expert or like Stiles you have a lucky spark to protect you :) So anxious to see what you think of this chapter after such a wait.

Chapter Eight

**Symbiosis**

 The hunters had long since ransacked what had been Cora and the others’ den, but they were all too exhausted to go much further to find sanctuary. Still, the instinct to put distance between themselves and the battlefield was strong in all of them, werewolf and human and it would be stupid to camp at a known den, just in case there were any hunters left.

 

 The last of their strength drew them to an old motel that apparently Cora and the others had passed through not long ago. Stiles and Derek shared around some of their food and water supplies while they worked through the abandoned site in a search for anything of value. There were vending machines with plenty of water at least that still smelled okay and some snacks that Isaac and Cora were sorting through, seeing what was good.

 

 Like Stiles and Derek, the pack seemed to automatically keep their horde together, in case they needed a quick getaway. It was a natural survival instinct, he supposed. They’d all managed to live this long after all.

 

 All of them were quiet, from exhaustion, from shock, even Stiles didn’t talk much, not even to himself as he dragged the clean, unused sleeping bags from one of the abandoned rooms. Apparently they’d belonged to some hikers that had gotten lost somewhere beyond their room, because their things were untouched – and incredibly useful.

 

 As Stiles packed the pocket knife and dynamo torch he’d found, he pondered his old life, where it had felt wrong to steal from the dead, from anyone, wondered what parts of himself he’d lost that would’ve made him a better person. He thought of Gerard, bound and bruised, a little bloody from the explosions from his own hunters and how Derek was working over him even then to keep his wounds clean and bandaged, how Stiles wished their captive was dead.

 

Then he thought of the way Derek’s lips had brushed his and how he’d felt like the best person alive. That had to count for something.

 

 “Where’s Boyd?” he asked as he walked back into room. They’d decided to all bed down in the largest family room available and Derek had tied Gerard up in the bathtub but left the room open, so they wouldn’t have to look at him at least. Erica was making beds up on the floor with the sleeping bags Stiles had found when Stiles had returned and she looked at him curiously before answering.

 

 “He said he was going to try and get the generator going, his dad used to work in a place like this when he was a kid so he’s a dab hand with that sort of stuff.”

 

 Stiles nodded. Just a few months ago he might’ve thought it bizarre that after such an event, they’d allow themselves to be separated, but then he remembered werewolf senses and thought they could probably hear Boyd from where they stood.

 

 “I’ll go see if he needs any help, I’ve got some experience with those things myself.”

 

 Stiles had been in enough of these places to guess that the generator was in the same area behind reception to reduce noise level, pollution and safety risk for the actual guest rooms. Sure enough he found Boyd, cursing under his breath as he worked over the machinery. He made a ferocious sight, all-muscle and strength and growling curses and yet when he turned to look at Stiles, his eyes were warm and Stiles could see the tentative kinship there. It made his stomach unclench a little. These were Derek’s pack now, Stiles had watched them solidify the bond right before his eyes. These were Derek’s pack, yes, but maybe they could be his too.

 

 “Can I help?”

 

 Boyd nodded and Stiles came closer, assured by the silent acceptance that he wasn’t stepping on Boyd’s toes or pride or any unspoken werewolf pack politics. He and Derek had talked endlessly about werewolves and humans alike but it felt different, with a new pack around them, with others to consider and Stiles at some point had just become bad with people, or at least worse than he’d been originally. At least the silence he and Boyd worked in felt companionable rather than awkward, if not as comfortable as the ones he shared with Derek.

 

 “Is there enough fuel?” Stiles asked with a frown after checking the usual problem areas.

 

 “Yeah, more than enough to give us a few hot showers,” Boyd answered, visibly irritated by the lack of progress. He stepped back from the control panel in defeat and Stiles could practically _sense_ his bones yearning for a promised hot shower. The wolf dragged his fingers through his dark hair that obviously was longer than he felt comfortable with.

 

 Stiles glanced at him briefly before studying the control panel with worn buttons. It was an older model to start with but the size of the buttons gave it away. “There are some hair clippers in the room, if we can get this going I could buzz your hair for you, you know, if that’d make you more comfy?”

 

 Boyd froze, “it’s that obvious, huh?”

 

 Stilrs shrugged. “I had the same restlessness too until Derek cut mine for me. You just feel more like yourself, right? And I guess a little less like a wild man whe  you’re groomed and stuff. I think the personal care is more important for wolves though, right? I mean you’re hyperaware of every little thing.” His casual respectful awareness but lack of accusation in their differences seemed to have the same effect on Boyd as it had on Derek, an initial surprise, followed by wonder.

 

 Feeling awkward at the attention, Stiles turned back to the panel and pressed a few buttons. When nothing happened, he shifted down the side of the large generator to the engine and tried to remember how he’d gotten the old heap at the radio tower working. He chewed on his lip then released it alternately a few times before reaching for the wrench.

 

 “Hey,” Boyd said warningly, “hey, hey, hey! Do you know what you’re doing? You could really hurt yourself.” He spoke quicker the closer Stiles moved to the engine and circled the bulky body of the generator as Stiles leaned up toward it.

 

 “You could get yourself killed!” Boyd cried out, just as Stiles shoved the wrench into the side panel and pulled off the protective casing. He moved without thinking, stared at the exposed engine just as Boyd reached for him and Stiles went with his gut, using the wrench to twist at the mechanism that had seized with time. He ran his fingers along the edges of some of the moving parts, watching as rust came away as if it were nothing more than fine dust.

 

 He could feel Boyd’s eyes on him but didn’t dare stop, because he had no idea what he was doing and if he thought about it too hard, he thought the spark, whatever it was, might stop working and this was the one thing he might be able to do with his pack to make them realise he wasn’t a spare part. He braced his hands against the body of the metalwork for a moment, head bowed, lip sore as he worried it, as his mind raced. He swallowed, a hot, fevered feeling like panic in his belly as he just _willed_ it to work.

 

  _Please just work._

 

 His arm throbbed, his bones ached from exhaustion but his determination burned bright and fierce as he rubbed his fingertips along a few more edges, checking the fuel one more time before returning to the control panel.

 

 The low, rumbling purr of the generator roaring to life made him jump in surprise. There was a grinding sound, then the sharp smell of fuel filled him with relief as he staggered back, staring in wonder at the beast of a machine from Boyd’s side. He grinned with a little disbelieving laugh and clapped Boyd on his shoulder. “You see? Just needed a little Stilinski persuasion,” he said as casually as he could manage, even as he felt giddy with the smell of fuel, success and usefulness.

 

 “I worked with these things for years and you give it one try and it works,” Boyd said, in a tone that was not accusing, just carefully contemplative, if a little confused. He studied Stiles for a moment, his mouth opening no doubt in question before falling shut again without comment as his gaze turned to the side.

 

 Stiles whirled to face the door they’d stepped through only to find Derek approaching, studying the generator with a pleased smile. “Maybe use the shower in the room next to ours once the water has heated, since I just tied Argent up in the tub.”

 

 Boyd nodded. “We’ll need to be conservative with it, there’s no telling how long it’ll last.”

 

 Derek’s gaze drifted to Stiles, then the generator, then back again. “It should be fine for as long as we need it. Do you want to go and tell the others the good news?”

 

 Hesitating briefly, Boyd gave Stiles a little nod, before heading inside, leaving Stiles and Derek in a charged silence. Stiles swore Derek’s gaze roved the place where his teeth had worried his lip as he’d worked and he straightened up self-consciously.

 

 Derek moved toward him, drawn to him as if he were magnetised, yet Stiles could see him visibly considering him. It was as if he wanted to make sure they still fit together the same way after all that had happened. Stiles shuddered, but not in fear or pain when strong fingers wrapped around his wrist and drew his arm out so that Derek could better inspect the gash across his skin that Stiles had been careful to ignore until then.

 

 “You’ve been hiding how hurt and tired you are,” Derek said, dark brows drawn together in a frown as he tugged the little slice in the fabric of Stiles’s sleeve aside to get a better look at the wound. Stiles winced and Derek froze, before continuing more gently with his inspection.

 

 “There was a nice cosy dark brown jacket in the hikers’ stuff that will fit me. I’ll miss this hoodie though, we’ve been through stuff, you know?”

 

 Derek didn’t look up at him, only inspected his bruised shoulder by tugging his shirt aside a little, in an instinctive protective display that obliterated personal space. Yet Stiles didn’t flinch, because the barrier between them, the hesitation between touches had grown smaller and smaller the more time they’d spent together, to the point where waiting for Derek to finish checking his wellbeing just felt like second nature. What did give Stiles pause, was the uncertain, concerned look Derek gave him as he slowly released him.

 

 “Is it because of the pack?” Derek asked carefully, as if he were considering the weight of each word.

 

 Stiles winced. He’d forgotten how wonderful and infuriating it could be, to be known so well by someone. Derek knew him, there was no hiding.

 

 “That’s it, isn’t it?” Derek sounded, confident now. “You’re worried about keeping up with them, or holding them back or something, am I right?”

 

 With a flinch at the accuracy of that accusation, Stiles dragged his hand over the back of his neck, remembering the same issue they’d had when they’d first set out together, of him keeping up with Derek, about holding Derek back. He remembered the look in those green eyes back then and how they’d pinned him to the spot for the ridiculousness of the idea, that Stiles might be some cumbersome iron at his ankle, dragging him down.

 

 “It’s not because they’re pack,” Stiles managed at last, because being honest with Derek just came naturally, had done since near-enough day one. “Not really, just…it’s people, you know? It’s a lot more people than I’m used to and I don’t know if I remember how to talk to people, or how to _be_ a people. You and me, we work well together, we’re like…synergy or something, but there’s more than just us to consider now and they’re…well you’re their alpha now, right? They’re yours.”

 

 Derek lifted his chin just a little, eyes filled with visible surprise, his lips just slightly parted with speechlessness. His gaze searched Stiles thoroughly in his silence and he stepped forward, hesitating in the odd limbo between the meeting of their lips earlier and now, where they could finally find out what it meant.

 

 Stiles reached for the moment, locked away safely from the dangers they’d faced and remembered, felt his lips tingle as if it had just happened. Derek’s eyes traced his mouth as if he were remembering too and Stiles tried to imagine what would have been said, what they might have done, had the moment been allowed to continue.

 

 Derek clasped his shoulder, cupped his neck affectionately, with all the casual intimacy they’d built with time and so much more, then he hauled him in close. They collided with a tender yet clumsy, urgent embrace, arms holding each other fiercely and Derek’s nose pressed into the soft of his neck.

 

 “I’m yours too?” Stiles asked into Derek’s shoulder, feeling foolish for his choice of words.

 

 He felt Derek’s smile against his neck and the peak of his jaw. “You’re my human alpha,” he mused, echoing words Stiles had offered in jest long ago.

 

A laugh startled out of him and Stiles felt something in him throb at the realisation that, additional pack or not, he and Derek were still together in this. They were still a team, yet more than that now. Feeling the warm presence of Derek at his neck, his closeness, his promise, Stiles drew back just enough to twist and bring their mouths together with a gentle bump. So gentle yet so out of practice and all the sweeter for it. After a drought of kindness, Stiles felt like he was shaking with the intensity of such a chaste touch.

 

 With both of his hands cupping Stiles’s jaw now, Derek nuzzle-nudged at his lips and chin to tilt him so he could get in close and Stiles melted, so greedy for it yet so tired. In the end, after kneading their lips together for a few blessed moments, Stiles leaned his forehead to Derek’s and exhaled.

 

 “Oh my God, if I hadn’t run like…twenty _thousand_ miles tonight, today, whatever, I would jump your bones where you stand.” His blunt, if tired words dragged a bark of laughter from Derek that sounded better than anything he’d ever heard of before.

 

 

 

 It turned out that Isaac was something of a connoisseur in the ‘kitchen’ and the hot meal he managed to built from the questionable canned goods were quite tasty. When they’d eaten their fill, Derek scooped the leftovers into a bowl and rose to his feet, his hand lingering on Stiles’s shoulder in absent-minded affection. “I’m going to give this to our prisoner and then do a scan of the perimeter,” he said before departing their company.

 

 Stiles dragged out the cards he and Derek had long worn thin now and the games that commenced brought out the fire in Derek’s tired pack if nothing else. Erica cheated like nothing Stiles had ever seen before and Isaac new almost every game there was, even some Stiles didn’t know.

 

 When Derek still hadn’t returned and Stiles _just_ caught himself dozing off where he sat upright, he realised he was surrounded by four warm furry bodies on the makeshift, oversized bed of mattresses, sleeping bags and blankets. They’d each had their showers in Derek’s absence and now there were four large wolves curled up around him, Cora awake and watching but the others half-asleep if not all the way already.

 

 Stiles met her gaze, sensing her calm and therefore knowing that Derek was alright, somehow _knowing_ that anyway, whether that was the spark or just Derek he didn’t know. She seemed to stare, as if waiting for him to rise and Stiles smiled sheepishly as he realised how obvious he was, how closely woven together he and Derek were now.

 

 Half-heartedly, he extracted himself from the tangle of warm bodies the pack bed and climbed toward the door.

 

 The feeling guided him, the awareness, that familiar sense of direction that was so much more than that. He used to joke that he could spin his dad around fifty times and set him off with a shove and he’d still be able to direct himself to any part of the city. It was almost like that, the knowledge of where Derek was without needing to hear or see him.

 

 He found him in the end suite, a good few rooms away from where the pack were gathered. He hesitated on the threshold, considering knocking, but deciding against it before he stepped in. The room inside was small but cosy. He frowned when he saw the simple double bed had been turned down with familiar sheets and the bathroom door, so close thanks to the diminutive space, stood ajar.

 

 The warm steam curled into the room like tendrils, like wispy, steamy fingers beckoning him to look. He couldn’t help but comply. Derek stood facing away from him in the shower-bath, lathering himself even though there was no doubt he knew Stiles was there.

 

 Soapy, dark water sluiced down between his shoulder blades, along the taut muscles of his back and down to the dip above his cheeks. Stiles jerked when Derek turned to wash the suds away, locking eyes with him. Stiles felt his face burn at being caught but didn’t look away. Suddenly he wasn’t quite so tired anymore, both because of his embarrassed excitement and because Derek was clearly washing old blood from his body, his gloriously toned, powerful body and it was a startling sight.

 

 “I…uhh…I didn’t even know you were that injured,” he managed, with more eagerness to keep talking and draw attention away from his flushed expression than concern, since he could see very clearly for himself that Derek was unscathed now.

 

 “One of those exploding arrows went off pretty close to me, it’s why I took so long to catch up.”

 

 And why Gerard had been pretty worse for wear, Stiles supposed. He’d been quiet in his captivity, due to pain, most likely. He’d looked in pretty bad shape.

 

 “You scared the shit out of me, you know?” Stiles breathed, from remembered fear running through his erratic thoughts and also the fact that he was staring into a very naked Derek’s eyes, a veil of steam filling the room. He licked his lips nervously and watched as Derek’s gaze followed the motion unmistakeably. “Aren’t you worried about being apart from the pack after everything?”

 

 Derek ran his fingers through his wet hair as Stiles watched, like a man utterly at home in his own skin, casual rather than displaying. “We’re connected now. They accepted me as their alpha, they opened the gateway that connects us to each other.” He scrunched his eyes shut against the sting of the water as he explained, rinsing the last of the clinging suds before shutting off the faucet and dragging a hand over his face to clear it of the water entirely.

 

 It was so simple and domestic and utterly normal and yet Stiles felt his chest clench at the sight of it, at how impossibly adorable and strong this man was all at once.

 

 Unbidden, his legs moved and in almost slow-motion he grabbed the towel Derek had laid out for himself on the side, familiar from their sparse luggage. His long fingers wrapped around the fabric, as if he might be able to derive confidence from the coarse fibres. Leisurely Stiles approached him, until he was standing on the damp tile just outside the tub. His breath skipped in nervousness.

 

 “We can sense each other anywhere now within a hundred miles, maybe more,” Derek added, his voice dropping an octave as he turned fully to face him. Shining droplets of water splashed across his cheekbones, trickled along the defined bridge of his nose, they clung to his collarbones and the defined muscle on his chest right before Stiles’s eyes.

 

It wasn’t like a desire for sex, although the sight of Derek awoke something in him he thought had died a long time ago. It was the need to get close, to feel this connection that had blossomed between them, to be able to touch it and lose himself in it even as it terrified him with its intensity.

 

 “It’s like that for me too, with you, I mean,” Stiles murmured huskily. He realised that for a few moments now it had ceased to matter how naked and beautiful Derek was, because all he could see was the softness of Derek’s expression, open and bare in a way it was only for him. Vulnerable yet also welcoming.

 

 Stiles had somehow lost his ability to read people, to understand social cues or responses but in that moment he was filled with a confidence that was bigger than him. Just with Derek.

 

 He reached out, dabbing Derek’s cheek, then his neck, then shoulders with the towel, with careful delicacy in spite of the inherent strength in Derek’s body. It didn’t matter, because durability did not negate worth or feeling. Stiles had seem him break apart when he’d found his sister again and he wanted nothing more than to protect him from that kind of heartache, whether he was the human and Derek was the apex predator or not.

 

 Besides, he supposed the bone men were at the top of the food chain now.

 

 “It’s like…” Stiles’s voice felt too thick for his throat as he gently dried Derek’s skin, watched little goosebumps rise along it in the room warmed only by steam and the little heater in the main sleeping area that they’d have to turn off soon, just in case. “It’s like being able to find your nose with your fingertip with your eyes closed,” he concluded, his words punctuated by Derek’s palm covering his hands, towel and all, and gently pinning them to his chest.

 

 Stiles’s insides jolted at the contact and his breath skittered out of him in a ragged rush.

 

 Green eyes that were also grey and brown looked right into him as Derek anchored Stiles’s hands to him. Without releasing that connection, Derek stepped out of the tub. It felt ridiculous but standing there in a drafty bathroom that smelled slightly of mildew and neglect, carefully drying Derek’s skin felt incredibly intimate, more intimate than some of the dirtiest fantasies Stiles’s lonely mind had ever concocted.

 

 Perhaps the power of such a simple act was further embellished by that loneliness? All he knew for certain was that Derek’s free hand caressed his fingers, their eyes still locked as they moved up to brush against Stiles’s scarred jaw. There they caressed the deep marred flesh of his cheekbone and above his eyebrow with almost reverence, with as much appreciation for them as the rest of Stiles. All he knew was that in that moment, he remembered what kindness was, what gentleness was after years of harsh emptiness. He realised how lonely he had been, even before the world ended, and that he wasn’t lonely anymore.

 

 Derek’s thumb caressed the deepest scar at Stiles’s chin once more, just before the accompanying fingers curled behind his neck to draw him in.  Their lips met with the same slow, gentle question as they had the first time, before deepening into something stronger, deeper, like a reflection dancing on deep water, meaning mingling with other flickering lights to form one indecipherable image that didn’t matter because it was stunning for all its mystery.

 

 It all felt like so much. Derek exhaled unsteadily between kisses, taking shaky little gasps for breath while Stiles shuddered against him and held on tight, the towel falling to the ground forgotten.

 

 “Did you lure me out here to get me alone?” Stiles muttered against ardent, so soft lips and grating stubble.

 

 “Yes.” Derek was unashamed and welcoming Stiles to be the same as they stumbled the few steps into the bedroom without breaking apart.

 

 The heater had timed out so while it was warm enough that he didn’t freeze, it was still cool enough that he wondered at how hot Derek’s skin felt under his roaming hands. The room still smelled a little musty, a little damp but his senses were full of Derek. The stubbly kisses trailed to the corner of his mouth, down to the scars Derek had traced with his thumb, all while Derek cradled his throat as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

 

 “Tired?” Derek whispered against his skin, up over his cheekbone and his scarred brow.

 

 Stiles ducked his head to press his nose into the clean, warm hollow of Derek’s throat and inhaled dazedly. “A bit.” His hands, that had been pinned between their chests slid up over Derek’s shoulders to grip at the hair at the back of Derek’s neck. “Still want you.”

 

 “Mmm,” Derek agreed nonsensically, nosing at his hairline. “You smell like me, like pack.” His words were quiet and husky, as if he hadn’t meant to say them aloud but Stiles knew what they meant to him.

 

 Slowly, Derek moved around him in the narrow space between the end of the bed and the door, his fingers dragging across Stiles’s neck, his chest, his shoulders as he did so, all so gentle, like the caress of a feather through his clothing. Stiles felt his lower body tighten when Derek pressed in behind him, nuzzling at his nape as if that was where the best scent was and he was starved of it.

 

 “Man I am so glad I showered,” Stiles whispered deliriously, closing his eyes against the little tendrils of heat curling through his body. He felt Derek’s chuff of amusement against his skin, punctuated by a tiny kiss that Stiles turned to steal for his lips. That earned him a little growl that he lapped at with his tongue.

 

 Derek urged his chin up, his mouth open a little more to taste him deeper and Stiles reached for his belt at the same time as Derek pulled his t-shirt up and off. It was like a frantic scrabble to rejoin their mouths in between removing items of clothing. Stiles fumbled as he kicked off his jeans, boxers, shoes and socks all from around his ankles and when Derek steadied him, he bore him into the closed door. Stiles gasped at the cold wood against his newly bared flesh.

 

 The slow burn between them was searing feverishly hot now, all-consuming and unstoppable. Stiles was so tired but so desperate for this man that he just wanted to fall limp under his touch and let Derek’s heat set him alight in ways he’d never been before.

 

 “You okay?” Derek asked raggedly against his jaw again, stubble grating, sensitising Stiles’s flesh. Stiles nodded, almost drunkenly because there would be time for teasing and taking turns and driving each other into madness, right then he just wanted to surrender to the fantasy he’d chased for so long of trusting someone enough to just fall apart under their hands while the end of the world raged outside.

 

 Derek tugged him back to the bed and they landed in a clumsy tangle of limbs, kissing leisurely now, tired but dissatisfied and wrapping around each other in a sensual embrace more complete than any other Stiles had even dreamed of. It was so much more than a clumsy fuck against the wall or the shower or the forest floor. It felt like everything, it was the need to anchor themselves in each other, to feel tangible proof of their connection before the next streak of chaos to tear into their lives.

 

 Derek had one arm around him, palm splayed out between his shoulder blades to hold him close and caress his fluttering heartbeat from behind, while his free hand smoothed Stiles’s hair back from his forehead in a simultaneously tender and assessing gesture. Derek’s eyes roved his face as if checking he truly was with him in this and when Stiles met his gaze it was sparkling, dazzling green.

 

  Stiles had noticed when he walked in that the bed had been made with the blankets they’d had in the _Camaro_ , if a little hastily, but what he hadn’t realised until they lay coiled together on it, was that Derek had done it hoping Stiles would follow him. He’d made the room almost warm and he’d made a nest here on the too-small bed, a den for his mate that they were now claiming together.

 

 With limbs wrapped around each other they undulated together, Stiles’s arms under Derek’s body and gripping his shoulders, brushing his throat and jaw as best he could with his arms under Derek’s weight. The fingers Derek had brushed through his hair smoothed over his head and down. They teased and mapped the taut lean muscle of Stiles’s shoulders and back, stroking tentatively down over his hip to help urge their hips together in a slow, lazy, delicious rhythm.

 

 Their foreheads pressed together like the rest of them so that they were touching from top to toe. Each time they gasped between tired but urgent kisses they could see only each other’s eyes with no room for anything else. It was perfect.

 

 Stiles felt Derek’s hardness between their bellies, felt his own grinding into the hollow of Derek’s groin. He exhaled roughly at the friction, frozen by the all-consuming pleasure pulsing through his exhausted limbs before managing to wriggle one arm out from under Derek’s shoulders where they had been wrapped around him, just enough to spit in his palm and guide the shaft of his aching erection against Derek’s.

 

 He’d done it instinctively, without insecurity or pause but when his fingers closed around both of their cocks and Derek let out a guttural sound of ecstasy he met Derek’s gaze. Shining like molten glass, half-lidded and fixed only on him. It occurred to him that just as he had long forgotten kindness or warmth, Derek had too. Hadn’t they both said they had never had a deep connection? In all those quiet conversations in the radio tower and on the road, hadn’t they come to know each other enough for Stiles to realise how overwhelming this must feel to Derek too?

 

 He let out a shuddery breath at the thought and dove down to steal a kiss from Derek’s lips. The hand Derek had on his hips urged them into pressing their cocks together, squeezed awkward and right between their stomachs and the only _just_ wet enough grasp of Stiles’s fist. Stiles felt heat flood him, felt his synapses burst with pleasure in his brain, in his groin, deep down at the hard velvet weight of Derek under his fingers, squeezed tightly together with his own cock. He felt the foreign tug of foreskin against his own naked tip, felt the way Derek jerked as he pressed down just right with his thumb to fuck his erection into the magic spot just beneath Derek’s head.

 

 “Sensitive?” he breathed out into Derek’s parted lips, feeling his own skin bead with sweat as Derek nodded. The grip on his hip tightened, the one resting between his shoulder blades pulled him in impossibly tight so that it almost hindered the rutting dance of their grinding bodies. It was like Derek wanted to get even closer and their skin was almost in the way. Stiles wriggled his other hand free to cup Derek’s stubbled jaw, the weight of his hot palm _just_ touching Derek’s throat.

 

 Derek groaned at the contact and immediately the hand on Stiles’s shoulder blades slid up, then hesitated, hovering at the juncture of his shoulder and neck. “I want…just…it feels…”

 

 Stiles’s wrist ached at the awkward angle and the pressure but it felt too good to stop, the tight, sweaty squeeze and Derek was starting to buck up in frenetic little jerks, exerting an urgent pressure on Stiles’s hip to help their tired bodies on and on. Derek looked desperate, as desperate as Stiles felt and almost feral and wild-eyed but in a way utterly different to the way he’d ripped men apart in front of Stiles when they’d tried to ambush them in the house.

 

 It was more startling than ever, how powerful Derek was and yet how soft he longed to be, could’ve been if the world were different, _was_ with Stiles, just Stiles. Derek turned his head slightly to press his throat into Stiles’s hand, didn’t stop arching up or pulling Stiles down into him. He caught the pad of Stiles’s thumb between his teeth just briefly, before sucking in almost apology for his animal urges.

 

 Stiles’s stomach tightened so hard it hurt.

 

 “Yeah,” Stiles managed roughly, “take it, trust you. C’mon, give it up for me…” He pressed more firmly on Derek’s throat, just enough to let him feel the heat, because he wanted Derek to show him everything, to hold nothing back and to know Stiles wasn’t afraid of any part of him. This was some werewolf kink or desire or bone-deep need and Stiles was hot for it because it was all part of Derek. And he wanted all of him.

 

 Derek’s hesitating fingers at his shoulder slid up to smooth his hair back from his sweaty forehead in wonder, tousling it, gripping slightly before sliding back down to let his knuckles trace the taut tendons in Stiles’s throat. Stiles’s pulse jumped in desperation. The fingers on his hip dipped over the globe of his ass, circled his tailbone that Stiles had never realised was so sensitive, to the point of searing heat, and then they dipped, hooking into the hot valley between his cheeks and pressing there to hold their hips together.

 

 Stiles groaned deep from his throat, nuzzling dazedly at Derek’s ear as he tugged his abused wrist free. He just fucked down frenziedly into the hard throb of Derek’s cock, chasing the liquid eruption in his own groin until every muscle and tendon in his body screamed, tight, hot, urgent and so tired but so hungry.

 

 Derek’s fingers mimicked his on his throat, holding him so gently in spite of the way they frotted together in messy, frenetic thrusts and Stiles let out a little dry sob as his cock caught just right between their rutting bodies and he spilled himself between the tight clasp of their bellies. He made a pained, guttural sound as Derek squeezed a hand between them, strong fingers pumping them hard, fast, desperate now. His cock was so sensitive and his belly shuddering with it as he kept coming and coming, milked dry by Derek’s efforts to find his own end.

 

 He was too tired to move even if he wanted to but his hips were jerking without his permission, his chest heaving and Derek’s other hand still gently cradled his throat as lovingly as he held his. Just when the sensitivity was too much, he felt Derek pulse against him, felt his fist squeeze almost too-tight and relished in the oversensitive burn, letting out a sharp gasp as Derek arched and froze, stroking them both through his own release.

 

 Everything after that was all hot and too-tingly and too sensitive. His cock was almost chaffed from the friction. The air was cool against the sweat chilling on his skin and Derek was so hot, their limbs so messy and sore and Stiles was so bone-tired but so happy at the same time. Sated. Safe. He winced as he stretched languidly, dropping sideways to curl against Derek’s side, _drop_ not lay, He sank into the blankets that they’d shared before but never like this and just…floated. He didn’t move except to breath, even though they were sticky and he was pretty sure the pack could hear them if they tried.

 

 He must have dozed because he came back to himself with a little jerk, a sudden burst of fear that he usually woke with, simply as a survival instinct, but Derek’s arm curled tiredly about his waist in a shattered, soothing appeal to remain still. “S’okay. Pack are on lookout. We’re safe,” Derek mumbled, without even opening his eyes, though he twisted slightly to curve around Stiles in what appeared to be his last ounce of strength.

 

 It was a little claustrophobic with his face buried in the hollow of Derek’s throat, Derek nosing sleepily at his hairline but it was also safety and warmth that eased his sore, tired body.

 

 “You’re obsessed with my hair,” Stiles muttered tiredly into Derek’s skin, his own eyes falling closed. He wriggled, arm flailing until he managed to grab a sheet and pull it over them. “And my neck.”

 

 There was a beat of silence but Derek didn’t tense against him, too tired, too content, too trusting, just like Stiles. “S’where your scent is best,” Derek admitted in bashful fatigue. “Where you’re softest.”

 

 Stiles snorted, even as exhaustion nipped at the edges of his vision and he felt himself gradually overcome by it. “Aren’t I soft all over compared to you?” he teased.

 

 Derek gripped him just a little tighter. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

 

*

 

 It was the odd, ethereal time between darkness and sunrise, the time that turned the sky a muted purple that they woke to. He and Derek had done it often enough on the road but it still left him with a disoriented, heavy feeling of someone sleeping too long and yet too little all at once. Still, he knew logically he was rested by the time they disentangled themselves from their bed, showered again and packed their bedding up to rejoin the others.

 

 Miraculously, the bedding was pretty much unsoiled but that didn’t stop the knowing looks from their pack when they rejoined them. It reminded Stiles of the playful banter of school or when Tara at the station used to get dressed up in the changing room for a date after her shift. It was camaraderie and light-hearted togetherness. It made him smile when he reached to boil some water for the salvaged coffee and Erica shoulder-checked him with an eyebrow wiggle.

 

 Each of them looked so different after a shower, nothing like the feral creatures that had attacked him in the dark. They were beautiful really, each entirely different to the other but all the more striking for it. Stiles ducked his head with a little smile as he turned back to the coffee and started the search of their supply bag for bag of the powdered eggs they’d salvaged but not yet opened.

 

 He wondered if he’d be able to talk with people, joke with people like he once had, if he’d remember how to cope with anyone other than Derek. He cast a glance at Derek as he prepared the powdered eggs with water from the kettle they’d dragged in from the break room. It was overwhelming still, in a good way, to be in close quarters with him and yet he wasn’t afraid. He chewed the inside of his lip as he stirred the lumps out of the eggs as best he could.

 

 The rehydrated eggs weren’t actually too bad, perhaps because it’d been so long since they’d had real eggs, although Stiles nearly choked on his mouthful when Erica made a quip about he and Derek needing to build back up their protein. The sound of soft laughter from the others, friendly and together made his stomach warm though and he stole another little glimpse at Derek to find him watching him with that affectionate silence as he ate.

 

 “So are you like a witch or something?” Boyd asked. “Because first with the generator and now making rehydrated eggs taste good? There’s definitely something up.”

 

 Stiles, who’d noticed Derek glancing at the bathroom door with reluctance, took up the cooling spare plate of eggs. “I’ll let your alpha fill you in on that while I take our prisoner his rations,” he said, squeezing Derek’s shoulder as he rose before nabbing one of the open bottles of water. The bigoted asshole could have werewolf cooties with his water or die of thirst.

 

 “I stood the old prick against the window earlier so he could piss, and let him hold his bound hands under the faucet so don’t let him try anything,” Isaac called out to him. “I didn’t see to his wounds though, he was lucky I didn’t make a few new ones after he spat at me.”

 

 Stiles nodded as he stepped into the bathroom. Gerard was oddly quiet, considering how disruptive Cora said he’d been in the night, though he’d likely tired himself out. He’d sustained some pretty nasty cuts and burns on his face, arms and one of his legs in the skirmish though and Stiles set the plate and half empty bottle of water on the side of the bath within the man’s reach as he sought out the first aid kit Isaac had abandoned. Gerard didn’t have so much as a fork to eat his food with and there was a pack of werewolves only feet away through an open door, so Stiles wasn’t worried but he kept up his guard as he took out the iodine and some fresh bandages.

 

 Gerard, who had already downed his food, gave a grunt of pain through clenched teeth and a mouthful of water when Stiles started with the wuond on his leg. He tensed but perhaps he knew it had to be done or he just preferred a human do it, because he didn’t reach for Stiles or try to fight him.

 

 “You know, your own hunters did this to you,” Stiles reminded him.

 

 Gerard sneered. “We would lay down our lives if it would put one more werewolf in the ground.”

 

 “How very self-sacrificing of you,” Stiles replied blankly as he bandaged up his leg before starting on Gerard’s forearm.

 

 “If it weren’t for their kind the beasts would have stayed in the dark where we could have continued our work to keep them at bay. Perhaps one day eliminate them once and for all. Mankind didn’t end the world, _Stiles,_ werewolves dragged all the demons out into the open and after that it was a massacre.”

 

 Stiles ignored him, or tried his best to. It wasn’t that he believed werewolves in general were the cause of all this, just because the alpha pack had started the apocalypse, but the way the man spoke, it sent a chill down his spine that made him remember the bone men in the dark, the fire consuming the people he’d set out to find safety with, his dad, or so he’d thought. Something must have shown on his face because he sensed Gerard studying him before he spoke again.

 

 “You’ve seen them.” Gerard’s words were heavy with realisation, as if it should have been obvious to him before and Stiles was forced to look into his vile face as he brushed the iodine soaked gauze against his marred cheek none-too-gently. He didn’t answer, he didn’t trust his voice.

 

 Gerard’s expression was almost haunted, if a little wild and he clasped Stiles’s wrist with his bound hands in urgency. “You’ve seen them, you know. They consume everything. They are born from chaos, through the need to survive. We know how to live, to avoid their path and we’ve avoided them all these years. Until that night, on the road right after you and your alpha pet left.”

 

 Stiles was frozen in his grasp. He felt more than heard Derek, Cora, perhaps all of them lunging into the bathroom, realising Gerard had hold of him. But Stiles knew they saw what he did, not a prisoner trying to bargain for freedom or fight for it, it was a man in the midst of a terrifying understanding.

 

 “They’ve devoured the world. We’d hoped they’d gone hungry, died out for lack of sustenance, accepted their victory over humanity and anything vaguely resembling it like the legends say…”

 

 There was a pause in Gerard’s words and Stiles was struck by a memory, by Derek murmuring absently to him what felt like a lifetime ago…

 

_“When I was younger, there were stories about things like them. About creatures that kill to become stronger, that consume the souls of humanity.”_

 

 Gerard’s fingers tightened around his wrist and hauled him in so close Stiles could see only the whites of his eyes. “Even I have only glimpsed them. No one has ever come to blows with them and lived to tell the tale. Demons like them, they are drawn to the brightest flame, like the monsters that masquerade as men with supernatural powers. They consume them and they don’t stop, they _never_ stop.”

 

 The humans that had been incompatible with werewolf venom had died and those that survived, they’d died in the riots that had come later or turned into werewolf fodder for the bone men. Because humans were of no interest to them, animals were of no interest to them.

_Demons like them are drawn to the brightest flame. Or spark._

Stiles’s blood ran cold even as he felt Derek yank him from Gerard’s grasp, even as he staggered backward from the force of it into Cora and Boyd and watched as the old man stared right passed Derek, the posturing, dangerous, enraged alpha and right at Stiles as if _he_ were the thing to fear.

 

 Through the rush of unearthly dread that filled him, Stiles thought of how the bone men had killed only those who crossed them that day the camp had burned, the day he’d last seen his dad. They’d moved through the sea of fleeing people and killed whoever crossed them but it had been almost instinct rather than purpose. They hadn’t been after the people he’d been travelling alongside, they’d been after him.

 

 Gerard’s voice was low, haunting, ghostly as he breathed out in abject horror, clearly staring at the marks on Stiles’s face, “they tried to harvest your soul, the spark in you, whatever makes them thirst for your blood and you escaped. They’ve marked you.”

 

 Everything in the room fell silent and Stiles couldn’t tear his gaze from Gerard’s ashen face, smeared with blood and lined by time like something out of his darkest nightmares in the dim light of the bathroom. He felt his legs turn to led and threw out an arm to brace himself on the wall because with everything he had, he knew that Gerard was right.

 

 He’d felt something vaguely at the back of his senses, like a whisper on the wind, a hint of shadow. He’d thought it was the hunters, had begun to doubt himself when they’d met them again at the mine but he knew now for certain. They were coming.

 

 He didn’t realise he wasn’t breathing until Derek was in front of him, hands on his arms, shaking him a little to get his attention. Stiles let his head hang and shook it, unable to speak, to breathe, to process. His chest felt tight and cold consumed his body. He might’ve thought his heart had stopped pumping hot blood round his body were it not for the fact that it was hammering against his chest like it might break his ribs.

 

 “Stiles!” Derek snapped, even as Cora swept in, cupping Stiles’s nape and urging him back into the other room to help him lay down with his staggering limbs.

 

 “You need to get away from me!” Stiles gasped out with the sparse lungful of air he’d managed to draw in to his tight chest.

 

 “Stiles,” Cora said this time, softly as she brushed the back of her hand across his brow, like he mattered, like he wasn’t signing their death warrant. “Stiles, you’re safe here, you’re _pack_ , okay? You’ve got us–”

 

 “I’m going to get you all killed!” Stiles cut across her, because this was it, wasn’t it? When he’d been alone in his tower he’d only had to worry about himself. He’d been so desperately alone and now he wasn’t but he was going to lose them all over again, he was going to watch them all die.

 

 “They’re after me too,” Derek said firmly, clasping Stiles’s hands between his and holding his gaze. “They’re after us all. We’re pack, you got that? We’re in this together–”

 

 “I watched them burn,” Stiles gasped out, “I watched my dad–”

 

 “Stiles, your dad is alive and he’s waiting for you to come home. I’m going to take you there. No one is going to die, you got that? I’m taking you home. You’re not alone anymore.”

 

 Stiles stared up at him, feeling like a man sinking into freezing water, unable to even fight his way free, only drag Derek down with him.

 

 Derek’s brows were lined with worry and his eyes searched Stiles’s face, one hand leaving Stiles’s to brush at his brow streaked with panicked sweat. One of Stiles’s hands slid free to cover the scarred side of his face, the place he was marked for death, but just as he dug his fingers in, Cora’s hand took his gently, stroking it as she placed it on his chest, where she covered it with hers.

 

 “Just breathe, Stiles, okay? In for five and out for five. One, two, three…” Her voice was so gentle, like Derek’s and while Stiles couldn’t see her, could only see Derek’s worried, stunning eyes, he felt her close, felt the way her voice carried through him with gentle insistence. She didn’t bullshit him, she didn’t tell him he was fine, she just breathed, counted five in with him, then out, then in.

 

 Slowly, as he felt his breathing calm, he became more aware of Derek above him, Cora by his head and warm fur flanking him from all sides and oddly enough, it didn’t make him feel trapped. Somehow, at some point, Boyd, Erica and Isaac had shifted and snuggled in close, their warmth chasing the cold from his panic and he closed his eyes for a moment.

 

 Was he really one of them? As much as Derek? They’d only just met and it didn’t make sense except Derek was _everything_ to him and he thought maybe he was pretty important to Derek. He wondered how much of it was an instinctive move to comfort a packmate, whoever it was and the more he thought on it, the calmer he became.

 

 “Is this alright?” Derek asked softly, thumb skittering across Stiles’s marked eyebrow. The pain ebbed away at Derek’s touch and Derek asked again, “It’s not too much?”

 

 Stiles blinked as it dawned on him that Derek meant the proximity of the pack, that maybe it’d make it worse to some, to feel confined. Stiles just never wanted to be alone again and that was all wide-open space and silence meant for him. He squeezed Derek’s fingers, then Cora’s and nodded mutely as he breathed again. In and out.

 

 “Here,” Cora said, pushing a container of water into his hands when at last he managed to sit up.

 

 Stiles accepted it gratefully but avoided her eyes, and was shamefully glad the others remained wolves around him, sticking close, and not only for the heat they provided his still too-cold limbs. Derek remained kneeling in front of him, watching with a quiet helplessness that made Stiles’s heart ache. He felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment and sipped his water.

 

 “I used to get them a lot, when Isaac and I were first out on our own,” Cora explained conversationally, without an ounce of shame which Stiles couldn’t help but feel comforted by, as well as her attempt to steer the conversation away from him. He nodded into his water to show his gratitude.

 

 “Not anymore?” Derek’s asked. Out of his peripheral vision, Stiles saw Cora’s free hand curl in the fur of what he thought was Isaac’s neck.

 

 “Not in a while at least.”

 

 “I…I had them a lot, for years, started when my mom died, then…” Stiles swallowed. “Well, I guess since I set up at the tower, started to take back control, they didn’t feel as bad as they used to, maybe I just caught it or…”

 

 A hand on his shoulder stilled his babbling and he was surprised to find it was Cora’s, to find her earnest, clear expression in her soft, elfin face. “Stiles, you don’t have to trivialise it. You don’t have to explain yourself to your pack.” Those words melded with Derek’s, the assurance that he wasn’t alone and he felt calmness become a little more tangible, even if his every limb was tense, stuck in fight or flight mode against an invisible foe.

 

 He wished he could put into words how it was. It wasn’t that it had been any easier at the tower, although the control he’d managed to scramble back there had probably helped. No, he knew why it was that he hadn’t felt panic like that in years, it was because his fate hadn’t mattered enough to incur panic. He hadn’t cared; there had been nothing left to lose except a life of loneliness. Until now, that is. Now he’d grown accustomed to caring, to being cared for, and that was the most dangerous thing of all. Now he had everything to lose.

 

 “I just…I can’t watch anyone else get hurt,” he managed. He couldn’t lose anyone else, not when he’d finally dared to feel hope. “And what if we lead them back to the settlement?”

 

 Derek’s face was determined when he glanced at him. “Stiles, there are a couple of other wolves there, a kitsune – and I’m pretty sure a banshee. It was bound to be a target at some point.”

 

 “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Stiles demanded, a little heatedly.

 

 “It’s supposed to stop you from taking on guilt for something you can’t control, something that hasn’t even happened yet,” Derek said without even flinching. Stiles saw the alpha in him then, not in his eyes or his strength but in his ability to stay calm even though they knew what was out there.

 

 Setting down his cup, Stiles held Derek’s confident gaze. “What are we going to do?”

 

 Derek squeezed Stiles’s knee. “We’re going to stop them.”

 

 The heads of the wolves turned to Derek but it fell on Cora, with her still human form to ask, “And if the world couldn’t stop them, how exactly do you propose we’ll do that?”

 

 But before Derek could answer, Stiles already guessed it, remembered that day in the meadow, the conversation about Deaton. “Wolfsbane?” he asked Derek, thinking of the bag of it that was stashed in the _Camaro_. “You really think your Deaton can help us figure out a way to use it against them?”

 

 “There’s only one way to find out.”

 

*

 

 Stiles stared at the worn string between his fingers, feeling fidgety and on edge as he had for the last day. The pack didn’t seem to share his urge to get moving, the need to put distance between themselves and what was coming, but they _did_ seem to share his restlessness. They were out trawling the town for supplies one last time, in an attempt to at least replace the clothing they’d lost when the hunters had trashed their original den, which left Derek and Stiles trying to get one of the cars they’d found working. It would mean the pack wouldn’t have to take turns running, would mean a conservation of strength that they may need. It would also mean a more constant speed. An overall quicker way home, werewolves could run fast and far but not forever.

 

 Stiles cast a glance around the street that their search for the most likely vehicle had brought them to. He didn’t feel a presence, other than Derek and the distant throb of the pack but he still was not accustomed to trusting his instincts, his spark, whatever it was. He twisted the string around his fingers as he glanced back to where Derek was working shirtless under the hood of a station wagon. They’d decided the cars stored safely in the garages might be more cared for, easier to get going and they’d both agreed this was the best candidate they’d found so far once they both laid eyes on it. Had it not been for the urge to move gnawing at his insides, Stiles might have been able to enjoy the simple calm domesticity of watching him work over the engine, something he clearly enjoyed.

 

 “I can take a look if you want,” he prompted cautiously, “not like, as a diss to your manhood or anything, just like, you know, maybe my magic fingers will be of use?” It wasn’t ever a sure thing, but it couldn’t hurt. He wondered if this ‘Deaton’ could teach him about controlling it, but Derek hadn’t seemed too confident about it when he’d mentioned it before. Stiles couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something, probably a cultural thing that Derek couldn’t explain any better than he already had. But this spark, this something extra, he felt certain he was meant to use it somehow, for more than just feats of luck, mending things or making flowers grow.

 

 They had to kill them somehow, the bone men, or they would never stop, he just didn’t see how a plant was going to help them with that, or his intermittent spark.

 

 “You haven’t stopped moving,” Derek noted, though he didn’t look up from his work under the bonnet of the car. “Any second you might explode with energy.”

 

 Stiles curled his fingers around the string in his grasp and forced himself into stillness. “It’s like ants under my skin. I need to move, _we_ need to move, Derek you don’t…you guys don’t get it. They’re coming, I can feel it.”

 

 Derek braced his oil and dirt-smudged arms on the side of the car and looked at him then, focus entirely on Stiles and expression wary. “Are they close?”

 

 “Not…not like right behind us, no, but they’re close enough and getting closer.”

 

 Derek stared at him for a moment, studying his face, the way he sat braced against the wall of the garage they’d forced open. Then he pushed back from the car entirely and reached down, fingers hooking in the thread between Stiles’s fingers and hauling him up so that he could pull him in close. Their relationship had been tactile since the beginning, but since their mouths had met, Derek would seek out moments to hold him like this, to inhale at the corner of his jaw, just by his ear and in those moments Stiles felt like maybe this wasn’t all going to go down in flames. Just maybe.

 

 “If they get close, I say we dump the old man out the back of the car as a distraction,” Stiles mumbled against Derek’s neck, not even caring about the grime from the car. He’d said it even knowing the bone men didn’t seem interested in normal humans, because that just felt wrong too, Gerard’s presence. It made Stiles feel like he was waiting for a bomb to go off. It felt like so many things were wrong with their situation and he was missing something big that would make them all make sense.

 

 “God, you’re noisy even when you’re quiet,” Derek mused against his ear, turning his head to drag his lips against Stiles’s face before drawing back to consider him. “You haven’t even thought about the one good thing that’s waiting out there, have you?”

 

 Stiles frowned, but before his mouth could even part around the question, Derek continued.

 

 “You get to see your dad soon.”

 

 Stiles stared at him, unmoving but he wasn’t quick enough to school his expression into anything other than his obvious cynicism.

 

 Derek’s brow furrowed. “Stiles, I will get you home to him, I promise you.”

 

 It wasn’t just that Stiles was worried about what might happen to Derek on the way, in his effort to keep that promise. There was still a part of Stiles that still didn’t dare believe they’d get there until he saw his dad, saw the settlement with his own eyes. It was still like a fever dream he couldn’t recognise as reality. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.


	9. Catharsis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the home stretch now, just a couple of chapters to go! I'd like to thank every one of you for sticking with me and for the kudos and wonderful comments. Thank you so much, it means the world to me.
> 
> There are so many emotions in this chapter. I hope it doesn't feel too slow? But this is such an important chapter for Stiles's character it felt wrong to rush it. I wanted you guys to feel what he felt, the weariness, the relief, the heartache, the love, all of it. I hope it achieves that. The chaos begins in chapter ten ;)

Chapter Nine

**Catharsis**

 The more time they spent together on their inescapable road trip, the more time that Erica, Boyd and Isaac spent in their human shapes. Often the chill of their makeshift sleeping quarters, usually an abandoned house or that one time in an old gas station, meant that Stiles woke surrounded by furry bodies. For the most part, however, during the day, he was able to interact with their human faces and his words came easier as the days passed.

 

 Stiles had even found a set of walkie-talkies which he and Erica in particular derived limitless amusement from. The car games did seem to drive Derek to exasperation as readily as Stiles’s restless energy though.

 

 They were moving at least, putting distance between them and the heavy cloud looming behind them. They stopped for food and fuel where they had to, when they didn’t dare take the risk of leaving it any longer, which abated the restlessness somewhat. Derek, however seemed to grow more distant the closer they drew to _Orelia Lake District._

They hadn’t seen another town for miles, everything was surrounded by trees and there were mountains in the far, far distance with snow clouds clinging to their peaks. It might have been beautiful, if Stiles hadn’t felt the pressure to keep moving. Not to mention the weight of Derek’s melancholy.

 

 “Want me to drive the next leg?” Stiles offered. They’d likely only make one more stop, with less than a day’s travel if they made good time.

 

 Derek tilted his head slightly in his direction in lieu of looking at him, showing that he had heard him but not responding otherwise. Stiles glanced in the wing mirror, spying the station wagon following close behind. They’d taken their turns carrying their prisoner but Stiles thought perhaps Cora and the others had seen the mood that had settled over Derek and had seen fit to give him a few hours’ respite from his toxic presence.

 

 Squeezing their increasingly intolerable passenger into the wide boot of the station wagon wasn’t exactly undeserved either.

 

 Slowly, Stiles let his fingers spread out, feather across Derek’s thigh where they gripped gently. There was a beat of further nothingness, of silent isolation cut off from Derek’s thoughts and contact, until something in Derek seemed to stir and one of his hands moved to cover Stiles’s and squeeze.

 

 “Don’t make me drag it out of you,” Stiles breathed softly, relieved at the way Derek’s grasp held him, as If he were afraid Stiles would disappear before his eyes. It alleviated his fear that something had fractured between them, though strengthened his suspicion that Derek’s own fears were what had smothered their usual banter and easy closeness.

 

 It had been since they’d set out for _Orelia,_  hadn’t it?

 

 “Derek,” Stiles said more forcefully, staring hard at his profile now. “Derek, what are you afraid of? Because it’s not what’s behind us.”

 

 Stiles was pretty sure it didn’t come from the same source as his unease. Afraid to really hope he might get to see his dad at last, might get to be safe, be with people like before, without fear it would all be torn from him the moment he let his guard down.

 

 “There are worse things than darkness,” Derek replied distantly, eyes on the road ahead as it grew into a steeper climb the further north they headed.

 

 They’d come across a few places where abandoned cars had blocked the roads further back but with such an overgrown forest enclosing the increasingly winding road, it felt like they were travelling an untrustworthy path. He let Derek guide them around a tight bend, the road compromised by years of wilderness left unchecked and allowed to creep toward the tarmac with a thick covering of muddy leaves. Stiles watched Derek guide them through it and then turned to watch the station wagon follow them through safely before looking to Derek again.

 

 He tried to be patient, he honestly did. He tried to let Derek choose his words, his moment but even before the years of silence he’d found it hard to cope with. He exhaled exasperatedly. “Jesus Christ, Derek, I’m out of practice with human interaction and acceptable behaviour, okay? Just tell me what I’ve done wrong so I can fix it?”

 

 Derek cut him a brief sideways glance. “You haven’t done anything,” he said, sounding confused. Perhaps he sensed Stiles’s mouth opening to press the matter further, however, because he seemed to sigh without noise, broad fingers flexing around the steering wheel as if for strength.

 

 “You were alone for so long before I met you.” Derek breathed the words as if it hurt him to think of Stiles back in that tower alone and daring not to hope for more. He squeezed the worn leather in his grasp a little tighter. “When you saw me, we were the only two people in the world…”

 

 His voice trailed off. Stiles didn’t know ‘people’ but he knew Derek enough to know where his words had been leading. He stiffened in his seat.

 

 “Stop the car.”

 

 “What?”

 

 “Derek, stop the damn car,” he snapped and Derek, with a brief glance in the mirror eased on the breaks until they were at a standstill in the middle of the road. Stiles turned his body fully to stare at him, look him straight in the eyes so that Derek could not misunderstand. “I chose you.” His voice was as intense as his gaze and perhaps those in the car behind could either hear or sense something was happening, something vital between him and Derek, for they did not get out of their car.

 

 Derek’s eyes, green-grey in the soft overcast light of the day looked so young and afraid then and Stiles saw the uncertainty in them, the struggle for the right words so similar to Stiles’s. Eventually, he managed, “I think maybe if you’d had more options, you might have chosen differently.”

 

 Stiles sat back a little, as if in shock but he he felt no surprise. He’d come to know Derek so well that this self-condemnation, this inability to allow himself to be happy, it was all because he blamed himself in some way for all that had happened to his family.

 

 At the very least, Derek feared this second chance he now had in his grasp would fall from his fingers like ash, the same as Stiles feared. Neither of them had ever shared this connection, not in times where everything felt so fragile, ephemeral like a bubble. They both knew that, knew each other and yet somehow things were managing to get tangled up regardless.

 

 Feeling confined by his lack of words, Stiles undid his seatbelt and opened the car door, spilling clumsily into the bitter air.

 

 “Stiles?” Erica’s voice called from the car behind but Stiles did not turn to face her, though he was warmed by the fact that she and the others had climbed from the car to see if he was well.

 

 “I’m fine,” he called back, “I’m fine, I just…just need some air or…” He didn’t stop walking, even as he spoke. He heard the other door of the _Camaro_ open but he didn’t stop. He walked and walked, his head buzzing with all the words he wanted to say but couldn’t make sense of; to make Derek feel what he felt, see what he meant until his thoughts were a deafening din.

 

 He jerked at the grasp on his elbow, his arm wrenching in the socket at the same moment that the ground fell away beneath his feet. He staggered back under the strength of the strong fingers locked around his flesh. They steadied him against the loose grit of the uneven ground, so he just about remained on his feet.

 

 “You can’t walk off on your own like that, we don’t know what’s out there,” Derek snapped sharply. “That’s the kind of stupidity that gets you killed!”

 

 Stiles surged forward into Derek’s space, ripping his arm from his grasp, not in the least bit grateful being saved from a spill, not when he was so angry and hurt. “Why does it matter? I only picked you because you were the first werewolf to stumble onto me after years of loneliness, right? As soon as we step into the settlement I’ll have more variety to choose from.”

 

 Derek recoiled as if struck. “I don’t want to fight,” he said, even through gritted teeth, as if he were struggling to stay calm himself. His words, so at odds with his own tension gave Stiles pause.

 

 “Derek, everyone fights. We’re going to as well, we have done and we’ll do it more – _a lot_ ,” Stiles said, with no less bitterness chewing at his words. “I’m gonna piss you off and you’re gonna piss me off. Right now? I am so pissed off there isn’t even a word for it. I’m pissed to speechlessness!”

 

 He swore he _saw_ the realisation that he must’ve been angry, to achieve such a feat, cross Derek’s features but Derek wisely said nothing. In spite of Derek’s closed-off, hardened stance and expression though, Stiles felt his vulnerability as fervently as if he were touching it and it made his anger simmer, if not his hurt.

 

 He drew in a heavy breath to steady his rampant thoughts, licked his lips nervously. While words came to him easily, they weren’t always the right ones and he was severely out of practice of the little insight he’d had into people.

 

 “We’re going to fight,” he began again, a little more calmly. “We’ll disagree, alright? But it’s not the end of the world.” He stopped short at his own words because they were standing in the aftermath of the world’s end. Bad choice of words.

 

 He dragged his hand over the back of his neck, through his hair and exhaled in irritation. “Look we’re a team, right? A good one. Don’t imply that I’m so broken by what’s happened to me that I can’t make a choice about what I want,” he said fiercely.

 

 “I meant it when I said you were the strongest person I knew.”

 

 “So prove it,” Stiles snapped. “Don’t decide what’s best for me. I survived pretty well on my own–”

 

 “I thought you said we don’t need to face down the world alone?” Derek challenged.

 

 “So don’t act like you’re a one-man army out to defend my virtue!” Stiles all-but growled. “Jesus Christ, Derek, You’re really so self-effacing that you think you’d have to be the last man on earth for someone to fall for? Have you seen you? I’m the one who should be worried _you’ll_ back out of this once we’re home.”

 

 Derek sighed, face lined, tired and he turned away to look at the trees. The day was grey and overcast, painting the world in muted tones that felt like something from a dream. It was like floating across a nameless plain between the past and the uncertain future that lay ahead of them.

 

 “Just…I just need you to know is all, if you change your mind, it’s fine, that’s all, I wasn’t trying to treat you like you don’t know your own mind.”

 

 “You’re so afraid that if you’re happy, the world will fall to pieces all over again,” Stiles said softly.

 

 Perhaps it was the raw truth in his words or his gentle, coercing tone but Derek’s stunned gaze lifted to him and there Stiles saw the reflection of his own fears.

 

 Stiles stepped forward, spanning the distance he’d put between them with closeness. He wrapped his arms around him, clasping him close and smelling his smell. After a beat, he felt Derek do the same, felt the familiar soft nudge into his neck and a sinking sensation, like all the hot air they’d filled with in anger had fizzed out.

 

“We’ve faced down some pretty horrific things and we’ve saved each other,” Stiles murmured into his shoulder, “that’s only natural, but it’s not…” He drew back, enough to look at Derek’s face. He didn’t know how to make Derek understand how he felt but at least he knew whatever he said, Derek would know it was the truth. “It’s not why I let you in.”

 

 He was so close Derek’s eyes were all he could see, guarded, like a creature that was once bitten and twice shy. Stiles let his knuckles touch Derek’s, let his fingers drag through his loosely clasped hand, hanging by his side and Derek’s own fingers tightened to hold onto him. It was the only part of him that moved.

 

 Monsters, Derek could face readily, it was heartache he feared the most. Stiles thought he could empathise with that.

 

 “You deserve to have whatever you want,” Derek managed softly.

 

   _And so do you_ , Stiles thought, but he understood what he meant. Derek was worried this was some survivor’s romance and feared what would become of him, if Stiles decided he wanted something more.

 

 The irony was, that the uncertainty of their relationship was probably the most normal thing that either of them would experience in this strange, unsettled world.

 

 “So your solution to worrying that I’m only doing this because I have no choice is to tell me that I’m wrong when I try to make a choice?”

 

 Derek’s brow furrowed but Stiles spoke again before he could answer.

 

 “I can sit here and list all the reasons I want you–”

 

 “Please don’t,” Derek headed him off with an awkward grimace.

 

 “So believe me then when I say this is real.” Stiles dragged the pad of his thumb across Derek’s hand that clung to his. He didn’t look away from his eyes, so Derek would see and sense in every way that he spoke the truth. “And I don’t know where this is going to go but I want to go there with you.”

 

 Derek’s eyes roved his face in that way they did, searching deep within him. Without saying a word, he leaned in, hesitating against Stiles’s lips as if wondering if he still had permission after implying he didn’t know his own mind.

 

 Stiles met him the rest of the way, a reassuring kiss that became something deeper as Derek cupped his neck and held him close. It felt like an apology and a promise and a request all at once, turning ferocious with need until Stiles felt himself pressed back to the nearest tree. He made a little gasping groan that Derek swallowed hungrily, in desperation rather than lust.

 

 He wondered if Derek felt the same sense of foreboding that filled him. If he knew the same feeling that something was about to happen that they wouldn’t emerge from entirely unscathed.

 

 Stiles grasped Derek’s shoulders, holding him as tightly as he could in return, panting raggedly when Derek’s lips broke from his to press to the corner of his kiss-bruised mouth, then his chin, right where the broken scar ended.

 

 They both knew that neither of them had experienced this closeness, this intimacy, this level of trust before. It was a fact as obvious yet as invisible as the air they breathed and while it probably could’ve been said more often, Stiles only managed breathlessly, “Don’t pull away from me because you’re afraid.”

 

 Derek was so close and Stiles loved him like this, pressed against him, forehead braced gently against his own. Their relationship had more baggage, more difficulties than it might have done back when the world made sense, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth the effort. It was all shiny brand new but stronger than anything Stiles had ever felt before, built on more than attraction and mutual interest. It wasn’t going to crumble.

 

 At last, Derek pulled back, glancing the way they’d come, hand still clasped around Stiles’s. “Cora and Erica are headed this way. We should get moving.” His expression looked strained. “I’m their alpha, I should be stronger than this.”

 

 “They’re not an army, they’re your pack,” Stiles said firmly. “They’re there for you to lean on when you need to, aren’t they? I mean, it’s like a family, isn’t it?”

 

 He wondered if Derek would ever stop being surprised about his intuitive understanding of werewolf culture, of his acceptance of it. It was no different to Stiles than another branch of human culture, foreign yet all the more intriguing for it. Though he supposed there were plenty humans who had hated other humans just for being different. Had the way he was brought up not been the norm? His memories of normal civilisation were so hazy by then it was hard to remember.

 

 “You’re allowed to be afraid and you’re allowed to let me or Cora or one of the others, _all_ of the others back you up if need be.” He chewed the inside of his mouth as he considered his next words. “You and me, we shared the load pretty well up until now, didn’t we? Don’t feel like you have to take all the weight back on your shoulders just because our pack has grown a little. Even when I was a younger, Dad and I used to help each other out, after Mom died, you know? You’re responsible for them to some extent, but they want to be responsible for you too.”

 

 That was what a family was, after all.

 

 The words ‘our pack’ seemed to settle the uncertainty in Derek somewhat, if not the general sense of foreboding radiating from him. Stiles gave him a little smile, squeezing his hand so he would know he wasn’t in this alone, if there was any doubt of that left after all that had been said.

 

 “Are you ready to go home?”

 

 There was a heartbeat of hesitation, where Derek seemed to register the meaning in his words, then he nodded, squeezing his fingers in kind.

 

*

 

 The trees thinned the closer they got and Stiles was practically vibrating where he sat. Normally he’d have switched positions with Derek and driven a leg of the journey but he was so distracted and anxious. Sleet pounded viciously on the windscreen and the road in further warning, until they’d mutually agreed it’d be best if they didn’t risk it.

 

 The warmth of Derek’s hand covering his thigh made him jerk initially from his thoughts. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

 

 “Nearly there,” Derek promised, squeezing gently. Their moods seemed to have switched since their last stop, with Stiles on edge and Derek calming to counter him, as if he knew Stiles needed him to lean on now, after he’d done the reverse earlier. In a perfect mirror image, he kept talking to soothe Stiles’s frazzled senses, even though Derek had told him about most of it before.

 

 “The settlement started out as a thriving farm town but before everything started to go bad, they had these solar farms and wind turbines installed. It was cutting edge technology at the time, but the location, up high with warm seasons made them perfect for it all. They were one of the first places to get it, almost an experiment I guess. When your dad took charge with Chris, they kept saying they wanted to send search parties out, to see if any other towns with this kind of setup had any survivors, but it’s never been…”

 

 It had never been safe, not with the bone men and the risks did not outweigh the gains. Not yet. Stiles knew that without Derek having to spell it out.

 

 “We’re on a strict limit per house but we have hot water.”

 

 Stiles groaned in delight, even though Derek had painted this picture for him before, on the darker days, when he’d thought he’d never get to see it.

 

 He knew about the walls they’d built around the town, the food production, the people who made soaps and candles. He knew about the protection they had around the reservoir where their running water came from. They were pretty much sustainable. It was like Stiles's resourcefulness and foraging on a colossal scale, Derek had said. They had to be careful but they were doing ok, people were ok there, supernatural and human alike.

 

 Stiles felt a wave of calm sweep through him as Derek described it all over again. If there was anyone who could build a new world where werewolves and humans worked together, it was his dad.

 

 “Spare parts for vehicles are scarce, so we try not to use them,” Derek continued. “We use horses, mostly, or our own two feet.”

 

 The idea of his dad, who had always been ‘not scared just wary’ of horses, riding one like a sheriff of the old west made laughter bubble out of him. He was still laughing when they cleared the boundaries of the forested area and pulled out onto a narrow plain. It was dotted with only a few trees and left a clear view of the _Orelia Lake District_ settlement in all its glory, and everything it represented.

 

 A lump rose in Stiles’s throat.

 

 “You okay?”

 

 Stiles couldn’t answer Derel. He felt sick and giddy all at once.

 

 “Hey,” Derek murmured, calling Stiles’s gaze to him, to where he kept glancing at him, ensuring he was okay as he guided the car down the straight road toward the vast wooden gates. “I’m here.”

 

 Stiles could only nod.

 

 The walls were like something out of a medieval siege and though he didn’t think the mixture of brick, stone and barbed wire fencing could withstand a battering ram like the movies he’d seen, he thought they would give them a fighting chance against unfriendly visitors. It looked safe, even if Stiles’s overactive imagination couldn’t stop from thinking of all the things that could conquer it. It looked like somewhere that you could put your faith in. he didn’t think the bone men could build a battering ram, or work one even if they found one.

 

 “It took years to build it strong enough,” Derek said, as if he knew the direction of his thoughts. “Me and the other wolves all tested it at once and it held. It’s some security. Nothing has ever breached it but we have watchmen, we aren’t complacent.” A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “Your dad and Chris Argent run a tight ship.”

 

 Stiles felt pride rise in his chest, even through the tight, anxious desperation at the thought that he was going to see his dad soon. He was going to see his dad! Unless…

 

 Unless he’d been hurt while Derek had been gone? Unless he’d been…

 

 “Gerard will be so proud,” he managed, trying for a joke to distance himself from his panic. His voice was rough though, with how tight his throat felt and it fell flat.

 

 Derek’s hand stretched out to rest on his nervously jittering knee. He turned his head to face Stiles just as they pulled up outside the gates. “Your dad will be proud,” he said sincerely. “As soon as he realises he’s not looking at a dream.”

 

 Stiles licked his lips and looked up at the vast gates from where he sat, even as Derek’s hand drew back to undo his seatbelt. “I feel like I’m looking at a dream.” Stiles’s words were so quiet they were nearly lost in the sounds of shifting as Derek reached for the door, but he stopped at the sound nevertheless, his fingers hooked into the handle as he met Stiles’s uncertain gaze.

 

 “So come see for yourself.” The little smile at the corner of his mouth was enough to encourage him, to dispel his nervousness enough for him to follow when Derek stepped out of the car.

 

 “Just hold it right there!” A voice called down from the gates. “How did you…?”

 

 A long silence echoed in the air as the wind picked up, cutting through Stiles like a whip with his jacket still in the car. Anticipation coiled in his belly like a viper and he heard the station wagon pull up behind them but Derek held out a hand in signal for them to remain in the car.

 

 Stiles covered his eyes as he stared upward but he couldn’t make out the face of the man calling down to them from the top of the wall. He couldn’t see his expression, see the reason for his silence. He could only see him watching.

 

 Then, at last…

 

 “Hale? Is that you?”

 

 Derek shielded his eyes, the sky bright now even through a veil of clouds, glaring white as if the sun was trapped within. “Parrish?”

 

 “Jesus…we thought…God… Open the gates!” The last part was an order, a shout that carried through the landscape around them and Stiles felt his stomach lurch as the gates started to open.

 

 This was it, this was really it. Civilisation, or the closest thing there was to it there was left. And his dad, oh God, his _dad_. The place where his dad had made a home. He only just barely managed to coerce his shaking legs back into the car so Derek could drive in.

 

 It was everything he’d dreamed of and more. He could tell that before the wall had been built, this would’ve been the outskirts of the town. Modest houses were sprinkled either side of the road, each with a vegetable garden out front thick with cabbage, leeks and other hardy vegetables to withstand the encroaching colder weather. The road wove deeper into the town, to where he could see more houses and larger buildings, a glimpse of the wind turbines in the distance.

 

 There were people milling about, tending the gardens or working in front of the greenhouses Stiles could see to the right, tucked behind the first row of houses.

 

 Derek had said the farmland encircled the entire back of the settlement, complete with animals and crops. As the gates closed behind them and Stiles climbed out of the car, he found himself frozen as he drank it all in, the sounds, the smells, the _feeling_ of being surrounded by life. By civilisation. It made his stomach quake and his mouth go dry with how overwhelming it all felt. It was both wondrous and terrifying.

 

 “Okay?” Derek’s voice was so gentle, just for him in the midst of all this new and noise. His fingers brushed Stiles’s elbow, then down to his knuckles, stroking subtly back and forth where their hands hung close together.

 

 Stiles didn’t get the chance to answer.

 

 Parrish jumped the last few steps down off the wall and jogged toward them, his hand on the radio attached to his breast pocket. “Jesus, Derek, we thought you were never coming back!” His face was bright, pleased and he didn’t look a lot far off Derek’s age. He surged forward and wrapped Derek in a brief, back-slapping hug, beaming still with relieved surprise as he stepped back to look at him.

 

 “It’s been months…” His words drifted off as the doors of the car behind them opened and the others climbed out. Parrish’s eyes followed them, widening slightly. “Wow, you’ve brought a small convoy. Is one of them your sister? You really found her?”

 

 “And this is the Sheriff’s son,” Derek said, in a way that sounded like he was trying not to smile. Like he was excited for Stiles, in spite of all the apprehension he’d expressed earlier. He wanted this for Stiles and that just made it even more real when Derek added, “can you get him down here?”

 

 Everything seemed very hazy, Parrish’s shocked eyes dragged over him from head to toe as he reached for the walkie-talkie, not unlike the ones Stiles and Erica had rigged up between the cars.  They were ex-police, Stiles realised with a jolt, or similar at least. His dad’s idea, he was sure of it.

 

 His thoughts were racing, reaching for everything and anything.

 

 Derek tensed, glancing back toward the station wagon with a wince. “We need to get to Deaton’s.” With an apologetic glimpse at Stiles, he hurried to add to Parrish. “Can the Sheriff meet us there?”

 

 There was a renewed sense of urgency in Derek’s voice and it dragged Stiles from the distant daze he’d been in since the moment the gates opened. He felt overwhelmed, dizzy with the presence of so many people, even though he could only see a few in the immediate vicinity. And his dad was here somewhere, he was here, he was alive and waiting a second longer to confirm that with his own eyes felt like torture.

 

 Derek squeezed his shoulder gently, apologetic still. Stiles knew that he understood how difficult it was for him, but it didn’t change the fact that the station wagon was jerking sideways erratically. If Stiles squinted he swore he could see Boyd, who had remained in the car, twisting around in the passenger seat to assist with their apparently incensed prisoner.

 

 He bit the inside of his mouth and gave a short nod. “We need to talk to Deaton about the wolfsbane,” he agreed, tone resolute, as he stiffened his resolve. He’d waited years, he could wait longer if it would get Gerard secured before one of the pack needed to resort to drastic measures, before he caused a scene, before…

 

 He drew in a sharp breath. He could wait.

 

 Derek squeezed his shoulder again in response.

 

 “Chris is on radio duty,” Parrish said, obviously studying their exchange and the barely subdued struggle in the car behind them.

 

 Derek nodded. “He should be there too. It’s about…it’s important.”

 

 Parrish blinked for a moment, bright eyes moving between Derek and Stiles thoughtfully, as if trying to figure out what was happening, before he reached for the radio again. “Chris? Is the Sheriff with you? Over.” Parrish never tore his gaze from Stiles and Derek, or the pack as they came to stand beside them.

 

 There was a long pause, then the radio crackled with a voice Stiles didn’t recognise. “10-10A. Just signed off. Problem? Over.”

 

 Parrish drew in a shaky breath. He knew Stiles’s dad, well, he cared about him, Stiles could tell from the way his voice went slightly rough as he said in answer, “You’d better get him down to Deaton’s. Derek Hale is back and there’s…there’s something he’ll want to see.”

 

 “10-4. Over and out.”

 

 Stiles felt sick, shaky. They were talking about his dad like he was alive and well. They’d said he was off duty and at home, resting after a shift just like he was still the sheriff of _Beacon Hills_. Part of him had never really dared believe it but the longer he stood there, in the place that had been only a dream until now, it was getting harder to deny. He swallowed. His dad was really coming? He was really alive?

 

 “Deaton’s is just around the corner, he’ll get there quicker than he would have gotten here,” Derek said, with an air of consolation.

 

 Stiles nodded without really hearing him. He didn’t really register anything other than in the most basic sense. He observed, but as if he were an outsider floating above the proceedings. He watched as Parrish handed his radio to his partner on shift to allow him to escort them to Deaton’s. Stiles did have enough sense of self to wonder if it was because of the pack, who were strangers to the settlement, but then Parrish walked briskly in front of their cars, gently urging the surprised people they passed out of the way.

 

 They eventually pulled up outside what looked like a traditional old street, with a wide dirt path running between the buildings, one side dominated by a large single story hospital, the other by the veterinary clinic. The latter seemed to have been much smaller once-upon a time, now with a sturdy wooden extension to the side. They were both in good repair, obviously well-cared for.

 

 “We don’t really use cars anymore, so I didn’t want anyone to get in the way. We’re so used to using horses or our own two feet,” Parrish explained sheepishly, as Cora, Erica and Boyd came to stand with them, Isaac apparently on guard duty in the station wagon.

 

 It made sense. With parts and fuel in very short supply, the settlement had adapted to using horses, so the people had stopped and stared on the short drive through the settlement. Everyone seemed to be so busy, doing their part to keep this safe haven working, though it didn’t stop them from staring.

 

 Stiles felt rooted to the spot at their proximity. So close, so many people in his previously quiet world.

 

 “Let’s get inside.” Derek’s hand splayed across the small of Stiles’s back, directing him toward the door to the clinic.

 

 “I’ll help Isaac,” Erica said with a sigh.

 

“Surely you don’t have enough medicine to last forever?” Stiles asked with an air of detachment as he stared across the road, where a young girl edged out of the single-story hospital on crutches.

 

 “That’s another reason that supernaturals are a welcome part of the community here,” Derek explained. “Deaton is a druid, he and Noshiko, a kitsune, they know how to work herbs and magic to help people in place of medicine. They’re what keeps this place going.”

 

 “Noshiko’s daughter is with Melissa’s son, Scott, actually,” Parrish said, a fond smile in his voice.

 

 Stiles whirled to face him, light-headed. “Melissa and Scott? As in…Melissa and Scott McCall? Scott’s here? He’s _alive_?” Everyone had mentioned Melissa in passing but there had been no whisper of Scott. And he’d been so ill with his asthma the last time Stiles had seen him, so frail it just seemed…

 

 “Your Scott is Scott McCall?” Derek asked, with a tone of someone asking why he hadn’t confirmed this before.

 

 Stiles stared at him, speechless.

 

“ _Orelia_ was a pretty self-sufficient town even before,” Parrish said conversationally as they approached the veterinary clinic doors. “I lived here, as a brand new deputy before the Sheriff and Chris and everyone else arrived. We were taken over by a rogue alpha, one of the last members of the alpha pack.” His face twisted briefly in distaste. “Ennis thought he was going to own us. When your dad arrived, he challenged him, alpha or not.

 

“Chris and Derek arrived right before the shit hit the fan and we took him down, took the town back, built the walls, made things safe, gave it order. But when we took him down, Scott got bitten in the middle of it. Luckily he was one of the few who survived the bite. He’s a pretty good werewolf, actually, thanks to Derek’s help.”

 

 Derek said nothing but Stiles could see he felt uncomfortable with the praise. He cleared his throat. “Once we’ve sorted this out with Deaton, once we’ve seen your dad, I’ll find Scott for you.”

 

 “He’s heading the latest scouting party at the moment but he should be back soon,” Parrish assured them, just as the chaos broke out.

 

 It took both Erica and Isaac to get Gerard out of the car without damaging it, them or himself further. They half-dragged his bound body out in the end. He was worse for wear, face ashen among the dark bruising, but that didn’t stop his struggles. He writhed in their grasp, like a hooked shark, lashing out with bound arms and legs. His elbow caught Isaac on the nose and he swore, blood spurting out everywhere.

 

 “Behave yourself, you bigoted piece of shit and remember who has supernatural healing who doesn’t!” Erica’s eyes flashed as she wrapped her arms around the man from behind, pinning his bound wrists to his chest, arms to his sides. She jerked her chin to Isaac. “You okay?”

 

 Isaac swore again, but nodded, wiping his bloodied, but already healing nose on his sleeve and grabbing the man’s legs. “You’re a man of the law,” he said to Parrish as they awkwardly carried Gerard’s flailing, cursing body ahead through the doors, “You want to teach him the meaning of the phrase ‘come quietly’?”

 

 As Erica backed through the door, Gerard kicked, hard, making Isaac stagger. Even with enhanced strength, the load was an awkward one, kicking, biting and spitting. Everyone had stopped to watch now and they hurried to get him inside.

 

 The assistant at the front desk was understandably wide-eyed and shocked at the sight of them. Dirty, road-worn and blood-streaked strangers, one screaming the language of a bar brawl.

 

 “We need to see Deaton,” Derek said over the noise, “and if you have a room free to store our prisoner until the sheriff arrives?”

 

 The assistant, whose name-tag read Hayden, blinked at them in shock for a moment more, before nodding. “He just had his last booking. He…he usually reserves Friday afternoons for making medicine but if you just give me a second to–”

 

 “That won’t be necessary, Hayden, thank you,” Deaton said as he stepped through a door from behind the desk. Stiles had only known him in passing before, but he looked the same as he always had. He was dark-skinned and healthy, if stoic, his face impassive as he regarded the chaos in his thankfully empty waiting room.

 

 “Derek, good to have you back,” Deaton said without really looking at him as he strode to the side. He made for a door labelled rustically with the engraving ‘ _operating room_.’ “Bring our guest through here. We can strap him to the table until he wants to calm down. Although most of the animals we get in here are a lot better behaved.”

 

 They got Gerard onto the table and used the straps Deaton provided to keep him there. But as the bile spilling out of his mouth continued, Stiles snapped.

 

 “If you keep your mouth shut for five seconds maybe the nice doctor here will give you something for the pain you gotta be in right now while we sort this out.”

 

_Maybe a horse tranquiliser or something,_ Stiles thought bitterly, if Deaton could get it through his thick hide.

 

 “I only really operate on animals,” Deaton said lightly.

 

 Stiles sneered at the man tied to the table. “No problem there.”

 

 Gerard gave a nasty laugh. “Rich, isn’t it? Coming from the stray dog that offered his cunt to the first beast he came across?” His voice was calm now, dangerously calm and Stiles wondered what had set off the panicked struggle outside.

 

 Had it been the walls? The sight of a civilisation he wasn’t in control of? Or perhaps, now bound to the table, he had just spent what little strength he’d had? Whatever it was, he was as eerily still now as an old caged tiger, waiting to strike. Stiles didn’t allow himself to step back in response, in spite of the uneasiness in his gut.

 

 “Gag him?” he asked Erica, before turning his back on the old man as if he didn’t care what happened to him next. Except he did. He just wished he was dead already.

 

 Deaton was turning the sign on the door to ‘ _closed’_ when he entered the waiting room again. Hayden was gone. Stiles slumped into a chair, still feeling out of sorts, closed in by so many people. He felt almost jumpy which made no sense. Hadn’t he longed for this? People? Security? Home? Why did he feel on the verge of panic?

 

 With Gerard silenced, the pack slowly filtered into the waiting room and took their own seats, but it wasn’t until Derek took one beside Stiles and covered his nervously tapping fingers with a his hand that he felt grounded.

 

 Derek’s palm was warm, pinning his hand firmly but gently to his denim-clad thigh and it just felt safe, anchoring him in place so he couldn’t float away. He wanted to curl into Derek’s side and press his face into his throat the way Derek did to him, but there were people watching, more people in this room than he was used to and so many more outside. Even if they weren’t pressed against the window to see them, he knew they were there. _Felt_ them there.

 

 He felt like he didn’t know himself anymore, how to act, how to talk. He felt lost.

 

 Derek’s voice, not aimed at him, not expecting an answer or action from him was a welcome balm to his frayed nerves. Intentional, he thought. He didn’t want anything from Stiles, except for him to know he was there.

 

 “Is my house still mine?” Derek asked Parrish with a voice carefully devoid of any expectation or emotion.

 

 “Yeah. I mean, we were going to give you the year and then…” Parrish winced apologetically. “It’s yours. Liam still lives next door and he’s been in to clean it, air it out now and then. He’s made sure it hasn’t fallen to pieces so it should all be in good order.” He took stock of the pack briefly. “Think you’ll need to request something bigger if you’re all going to bunk together though.”

 

 Derek shrugged. “It’ll do for now. Once we’re settled, they might want to be put on the list for their own homes.”

 

 To Stiles’s left, Erica made a choked noise. “Our… _own_ house? Like…me and Boyd, Isaac and Cora? Each?”

 

 Parrish smiled gently. He’d been a cop, Stiles could have guessed as much, even if Parrish hadn’t admitted he’d once been a deputy. He had that sympathetic, understanding but professional smile. It was so much like his dad that it hurt.

 

 “We have a list where people request things, so you might have to wait a little while. Mrs McCall just delivered a new baby to the Greenbergs, so an extension to their house and the repairs to the main barn will take priority but after that, yeah, you’ll be on the list to get your own homes.”

 

 He made a face. “We’ll have to set you up with your own rations tab though. It’s almost another list. We all get allocated food according to our household, if that makes sense? So a house with kids will get more than a house with two, it’s less complicated than it sounds and it’s not…food isn’t scarce, we all eat well, though were’ careful. We don’t run on money here. We simply all do our part and get an equal share in the food and the help.”

 

 “Even though we’re werewolves?” Boyd challenged.

 

 Parrish blinked, as if Boyd had spoken a foreign language, then he seemed to process the question. “Well, yeah? I mean, including Derek, we have thirty-three supernaturals, soon to be thirty-four, all being well.” His cheeks pinked a little.

 

 “Lydia’s pregnant again?” Derek asked.

 

 Stiles felt some of the tension that had lingered in Derek’s bones ebb away with every moment Parrish spoke. It was as if hearing a familiar voice, smelling home, had eased something in him.

 

 “It was a bit of surprise to say the least,” Parrish confirmed sheepishly.

 

 Cora shifted uncomfortably, no doubt sensing the change in her brother, but not quite sharing his relief, not yet. “So the people here, they’re just going to accept four strange werewolves into this safe haven they’ve built without a second-glance?” Her tone was sharp with disbelief. Verging on rude, but understandable.

 

 “Cora,” Derek started.

 

 “No, it’s alright.” Parrish held up an appeasing hand. “We’ve got about a hundred or so families here. So everyone knows everyone, really. You’ll be the talk of the town for a while but you’re not going to be chased out the gates with pitchforks if that’s what you mean.” Again, with that understanding smile. “When you’re settled, we can give you the tour. We don’t have much in the way of amenities but we have the necessities and we’ll have to find you some jobs…”

 

 Suddenly, Stiles felt Derek and the pack go stiff in that way they did if they had sensed something. He looked in the direction of the door at the same time as them. It was glass, with a limited view out into the street. The sight he glimpsed was so at odds with the picture painted by his memory that it didn’t register at first, not even when two horses drew to a halt outside and a tall, bearded, older man opened the door.

 

 Derek stood when he entered and the stranger wrapped him in a tight hug, before drawing back to look at him.

 

 It was brotherly, the closeness they shared and they talked with such ease. There was a relief in Derek and in this man, Chris, Stiles realised, that the other was alive. Then Stiles saw, really saw the second man standing in the doorway and stared at Stiles as if he were ghost.

 

 His hair was entirely grey now, his face lined and pale from shock. He was a little thinner but not sickly thin. His eyes were bright and they were suddenly all Stiles could see as he took one step toward him, then another, hesitant to rush in, lest the image burst on contact like a cruel mirage. His entire chest clenched so tight he couldn’t breathe and it was with clumsy feet that he staggered forward until they collided together.

 

 It was like a wave crashing against the waiting cliff-face, unforgiving and painful, yet as welcome as the crash-landing back to shore.

 

 Stiles’s entire body was so shaking so hard it hurt as two warm, strong arms wrapped around him, held him tight. Fingers scrabbled at the hair at the back of his head until he winced but didn’t dream of pulling away. Guttural, rough sobs filled Stiles’s ears, shook him as they tore from the chest pressed against his own. He burrowed his nose into his dad’s neck, inhaling greedily like he’d done as a little kid when he’d woken from a bad dream and one of his parents had come into him in the night.

 

 It wasn’t until the fingers in his hair and the arm wrapped tightly around his back loosened enough to relieve the painful ache in his bones, if not his chest, that he realised the heart-wrenching sobs that filled their embrace were words.

 

 They were nearly lost under the wave of grief, Stiles only grasped at a few of them as they tumbled over of his dad’s lips. His voice, however broken, was so wonderful to hear.

 

 “…little boy…left you…I _left_ you…”

 

 “Dad,” Stiles managed hoarsely, the sound muffled by his dad’s neck. At the noise, his dad drew back enough to look at him.

 

 With his lined skin streaked with unashamed tears, his dad clasped either side of Stiles’s face, turning him this way and that. His thumb traced over the jagged ends of the scarred claw marks at Stiles’s jaw as his eyes traced the rest with obviously pain, as if he’d been the one to put them there himself on his son’s face.

 

 “I should’ve never stopped looking for you.”

 

 Stiles shook his head. “I thought you were dead too, I thought you all were, I thought….I thought I was…”

 

  _I thought I was all alone in the world and now I’m not._

 

 For that brief moment, the bone men, whatever was close behind, he thought they could take it. He didn’t have to do it all by himself anymore.

 

 He didn’t realise when he’d started sobbing, when after years of holding it all together, he finally broke down, not until his dad steadied him where he stood and wrapped him in his arms again. This time, his embrace was firm but careful, as if he might shatter. Stiles’s fingers dug into his dad’s shoulders and he didn’t even care that people were watching, that Derek was watching him cry like a child.

 

 “It’s okay, you’re okay kiddo,” his dad whispered in his ear, just like he’d done so many times when he’d been young. Oh God, so young. They’d lost so much time. And he couldn’t stop crying.

 

 His head was pounding by the time he felt able to gather himself and process anything apart from his dad, who, along with Derek had guided him into his seat once more. His shaky legs thanked them, even if his rough, gasping breaths wouldn’t allow him to. He felt dried up and empty, but in a good way, like something scrubbed raw but clean, ready to start again.

 

 Later he’d probably feel some awkwardness for his breakdown in front of so many people, but at that moment, he barely realised they were there.

 

 “Steady,” Derek said gently, and Stiles knew what he meant to say, even without him saying it. He’d been so strong for so long, had disregarded the panic, the fear, the heartache and now it had broken. Now he was safe and the shock or stress, whatever it was unleashed itself. He felt drained, but not enough that he couldn’t reach out and grab at his dad’s jacket like a little kid when he went to step away.

 

 “I’m not going anywhere,” his dad promised, taking a seat beside him and Stiles nodded, feeling almost sleepy. It felt like at long last everything was right with the world and now he could just drift away. His fingers tightened on his dad’s jacket.

 

 “I can’t believe you were riding a horse,” Stiles murmured distantly. He remembered the family holiday to a ranch when he’d been young, his mother still alive, and how his dad had refused to so much as come near a horse. Times had definitely changed.

 

 His dad gave a little surprised bark of laughter. It felt so good to hear.

 

 “There’s something we need to discuss. Two somethings, I guess,” Derek said from his other side, keeping his proximity to Stiles, offering his support in case Stiles should need it. He was talking to Stiles’s dad, to Deaton and Chris, Stiles thought, though his brain felt almost drunk, obscured by catharsis.

 

 “I don’t know where to start, what’s more important…”

 

 Derek sounded so far away, so remote that even through his giddy haze, Stiles reached out to touch his arm, grasp it gently, wanting to anchor himself to him, too. He licked his dry lips, willing his fuzzy thoughts into cooperation. He felt almost drugged but managed hoarsely, “the bone men. They’re coming. Not like, right behind us.” Not enough to see the hollows of their eyes but not far behind. “They’re close…”

 

 Everyone in the room fell silent.

 

 Derek covered Stiles’s hand with his and Stiles felt eerily disconnected from everything except his dad and him in that moment, each of them holding onto him like he was going to slip away. Except his chest and his head hurt from crying, his dad was cold from the outdoors and Derek was warm as always. He could feel it, all of it and it was blissfully, imperfectly real. In that moment, it was the bone men that felt like the dream, not the men either side of him.

 

 “I think we have an idea,” Derek said tentatively to the quiet. “We…that is, Stiles found something. Something maybe you could help us turn into a weapon; a way to stop them.” He must have aimed the latter at Deaton, but Stiles was looking at his dad’s fingers on his knee, blunt-nailed, work-worn but gentle hands that had held him when he was small. Just the same as ever in spite of everything else.

 

 “But Chris? It’s Gerard. He’s in the other room, he’s…he’s our prisoner.”

 

 Chris stiffened where he stood, and beside him, Stiles felt his dad sigh. He dragged his hand unwillingly from Stiles’s knee and over his hair, the same way Stiles did.

 

 “Okay,” he said, looking as weary as Stiles felt. “One thing at a time. The…the bone men,” he forced out, as if saying the name would make them appear. “How close are they?”

 

 Derek looked to Stiles, which made Stiles stare uncertainly at his dad, Deaton, Chris, the people who seemed confused as to why Stiles was the one with the intuition on this.

 

 Stiles chewed the inside of his cheek. “We have time,” he assured them.

 

 His dad nodded slowly, no doubt struggling to remain steady, to maintain his control in the face of finding his son who he’d believed dead for so long. “So…what the hell is Gerard Argent doing in our vet clinic?” he asked, voice strained.

 

 “He came across us on the search for Cora,” Derek said cautiously, “He chased us. He tried to kill us. Over and over.”

 

 “We should have killed him,” Cora snapped. “But Derek wanted to give him a trial. Prove we’re not the beasts he accused us of being.” She lifted her chin as if to defy them to challenge her, that their treatment of their prisoner had been anything beyond reproach, anything less than he deserved. “The damage on him is all by his own men, who’d rather kill each other, like animals, than let the ‘beasts’ they hunt go free.”

 

 A long silence stretched through the sterile, plain room. The pack watched, waited for Derek’s word, trusting him in the face of strangers, trusting him to lead them through the shadowed path that lay ahead.

 

 Stiles gripped Derek’s arm a little tighter without really meaning to, willing to follow Derek along the same path. The right one. Or walk beside him, at least.

 

 Each of them in that room was as lost as the other right then, but perhaps they could guide each other through.

 

 Eventually, Chris shifted, clearing his throat as he glanced toward the currently closed operating room door. “Would it sound cold if I said I’d hoped I’d seen the last of him when the rest of the world died out?”

 

 “Not really, we’ve met him,” Erica said tartly, inciting a smile from Chris’s otherwise distant face.

 

 “People like Gerard are the reason we never stood a chance,” Chris said. “While people like me and Talia Hale were trying to get people to come together against the alpha pack, people like him were petitioning for mass genocide. He wanted everyone even suspected of having supernatural blood wiped out.”

 

 Stiles stared at him and saw a hint of his own frustrations from his younger self, curled up and afraid on the sofa and watching the world fight each other instead of helping each other. He remembered asking his dad why everyone didn’t just work together to face the alpha pack and his dad’s sad, wistful expression, the same one Chris wore now.

 

 “My sister, Kate was obsessed with the alpha pack, obsessed with impressing our father. She made it her life’s work to know all there was to know about our enemies, to hunt the alpha pack down. She thought the Hales, a longstanding werewolf family might hold secrets about them, how to find them, how to kill them. The Hales were like werewolf aristocracy.” He met Derek’s gaze then, “so she targeted them.”

_And burned their house down, long before the alpha pack outed the supernatural to the world,_ Stiles remembered. So that had been it, she hadn’t been after the Hales, not really, they were just a stepping stone on the way to the true prize to please ‘daddy’. He set his jaw, his anger helping him come back to himself somewhat.

 

 “The last time I saw my father, just after the riot, just after Peter Hale shot her, he was like I’ve never seen him. Like a wild animal with rage, he blamed the Hales, he blamed the alpha pack, the world for his one loyal child being killed…”

 

 Chris sighed heavily, not with guilt or anger or loss but with weariness, like he’d thought he was done with this all long ago. “He blamed me too, for trying to side with them, rather than wipe them out. He disappeared around the same time _Beacon Hills_ was lost and I thought he was finished.”

 

 “No such luck,” Isaac muttered bitterly.

 

 Stiles felt his dad’s warmth at his side, thought about how he had always done everything for Stiles, always. He thought that bad things had happened to everyone that was left and some had risen above it, some had come back stronger than ever and some had been twisted by it, morphed into something far worse than the alpha pack.

 

 “I should probably check his injuries,” Deaton offered unwillingly. “Melissa and Noshiko are of course the experts but my skills will do for now. He looked a little worse for wear.” He glanced to Derek and Stiles on his way to the door. “And then I believe we need to discuss whatever it is that you think you have to stop the bone men.”

 

 Stiles drew in a shaky breath. “You feel it too, don’t you?” he murmured.

 

Deaton met his gaze with a cool composure that didn’t quite touch his dark eyes. “Yes. They are coming.”

 

 

 Gerard may have been incensed when they’d arrived, struggling almost too much for an intelligent, albeit evil, man who knew there was no way of escape, but when he saw Chris, his bile resurfaced tenfold. He didn’t still, even when Deaton tried to assess his injuries but the disgust on Chris’s face was almost palpable.

 

 “Leave him tied up, I’ll lock him in the holding cell when we’re done here,” Chris said with distaste.

 

 “Here.” The voice startled Stiles from his thoughts and he looked up to see Cora offering him an awkward smile and a mug of water. “You still look a little pale.”

 

 Stiles nodded and took it gratefully, glad of something to occupy his hands and hide his embarrassment in. He’d pretty much broken down when he’d seen his dad and he wasn’t entirely sure he’d pieced himself back together yet. Everyone was watching him though, as if wondering if he had. So many eyes, so many people, pressure to be okay, after years of only having to be strong for himself, only himself to let down.

 

 Everyone had pulled the other chairs from the waiting room around, so they were sitting in an informal circle. He tried to remember the last few days spent sitting around campfires, tormenting Erica over the car radio and getting taunted right back. He tried to remember this was his dad and his pack and they had him. He was okay.

 

 “Deaton has given him something to knock him out and take care of the pain,” Chris said stiffly as both he and Deaton closed the door to the operating room.

 

 Derek looked to Stiles, before nodding slightly. “We’re running out of time and we need to figure out a plan.”

 

 Drawing in a little breath to try and shake the last, cloying remnants of shock, Stiles reached for the rucksack he’d instinctively dragged in with him. Carefully, he withdrew the large bag within, the bag of raw wolfsbane.

 

Deaton’s eyes widened and he reached for the bag, only just stopping himself at the last moment. He stood awkwardly in front of Stiles, arm half outstretched as he whispered, “How did you find it? The alpha pack destroyed every known source before they came out from the shadows.”

 

 “Stiles made a whole field of it grow,” Derek said. His tone was matter-of-fact, honest but there was a tinge of awe too. “He…he can make things last, he can make things work. He can make things grow where there should be no life.”

 

 Understanding dawned in Deaton’s face. “You have a spark.”

 

 Feeling his father and Chris’s gazes on him, Stiles dragged a hand across the back of his neck. “Yeah I…I guess? I didn’t know what that even meant or what it really was until Derek told me. I mean eventually. Until then I just thought I’d been lucky, you know?”

 

 Boyd made a disbelieving sound. “You call living in solitude lucky?”

 

 Stiles shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t dead at least. I was such a klutz as a kid I wasn’t even sure how I managed at first but I guess…well my lucky spark did it.”

 

 “Stiles,” his dad interrupted, with an air of disapproval. He grasped Stiles’s forearm, his expression serious. “Kid, you were always the most resourceful, most frustratingly smart kid, maybe this spark or whatever helped you avoid trouble, but it isn’t the reason you survived. _You_ did that.”

 

 Stiles felt his throat tighten and all he could do was nod in answer. Derek was a silent presence at his side but he could almost feel his approval, his agreement. It had been exactly what Derek had been telling him all this time, he supposed, but coming from his dad, who was just the best at everything? Who was just…so very alive, whole and strong?

 

 He nodded again to distract from the emotion welling again in his eyes, blinked it away defiantly.

 

 “So, can we use this? Against the bone men?” Stiles asked.

 

 Deaton slowly reached a hand out and Stiles pressed the bag into his grasp. “Not many things can survive aconite poisoning, even in the supernatural world. Its nickname wolfsbane can be misleading that way.”

 

 He considered the purple flowers, a little wilted, though nowhere near as much as they should be. “They can’t technically ingest it. As far as I’m aware they don’t eat anything but the souls of the more than human, but perhaps…” He straightened up with a brief, almost inspired glance at Chris. “I think we have something that could make these work…yes…” He looked to Stiles and Derek then. “Leave this with me, rest while you can. I need…I need space to work on this and time…”

 

 Derek rose to his feet. “We’re sort of short on that last one,” he warned.

 

 Deaton focussed on Stiles again. “Yes,” he murmured. “I am aware. But there should be enough to prepare and all of you need to rest. You’ll need all your strength when they come.”

 

 

 With Gerard out for now, Chris offered to escort Cora and the rest of the pack to Derek’s house, so that Derek could drive Stiles and his dad to his home. “I’ll bring Mischief round later, when I come back to the clinic,” Chris promised the sheriff as he climbed into the front passenger seat of the station wagon. “You get your boy home.”

 

 Stiles’s dad gave him an awkward little smile and tilted his head in the direction of the horses. “The horse,” he explained, almost apologetically. “He sort of had your temperament.”

 

 If Stiles hadn’t been so stunned, he might have laughed.

 

 Apparently Derek’s house wasn’t far from the clinic, but Stiles’s dad’s was closer toward the farmland, a bit of a trek on already weary legs so he was grateful for the ride and also for an excuse for more time with Derek. It felt like they were on a way to a goodbye and the thought was unbearable.

 

 He was at a loss, wanting to go with his dad but reluctant to leave this man who he’d found such strength in, who’d helped him find himself.

 

 Derek was quiet, in a way utterly different to their companionable silence. He too seemed uncertain of the path that lay ahead, how they would fit together now.

 

 “Scott is going to be so happy to see you,” his dad said wistfully, his throat tight with emotion. “Their scouting party should be home in a day or two. They sometimes hunt but we try to leave the wildlife to regroup after a season and rely on our own animals and crops.”

 

 Stiles stared out the window at the settlement as it passed them by. “I can’t believe you built this,” he whispered, in part awe and emotional exhaustion.

 

 He was in the passenger seat, but his father was sitting forward in the rear and he could feel his warmth, his closeness and Derek’s too. He felt safe, safe enough to fall apart and that thought alone made it difficult to hold it together.

 

 The afternoon sun broke through the clouds to glint off the wind turbines in the distance.

 

 “A lot of it was in place when we arrived. The solar farm, the wind turbines and the farmland,” his dad said. “When we got rid of Ennis, those who had survived his wrath welcomed us, worked with us to build what you see, supernatural and human. We all learned to live together.”

 

 Stiles could hear the sadness in it, the wish that the rest of the world had done the same, before it was too late. Then his father squeezed his shoulder, in a way that he knew was meant to convey that it was too late to worry over such things now.

 

 His father’s home was a modest little two story house. Brick, sturdy where it stood with a little grassy, fenced in yard to the rear like all the other houses along the street. Like the rest of the settlement he’d seen so far, it had clearly been built before the apocalypse but unlike a lot of others, it didn’t seem to have been extended. It looked like a good home and that surprised Stiles.

 

 “You’re lucky,” Derek said softly as they climbed out the car. “There weren’t any single-roomed buildings in good enough repair, so your dad has a second bedroom for you.” He offered a little smile as he dragged out the duffel bag Stiles kept most of his clothing in, and one of the bags that held most of the possessions Stiles had brought with him from the radio tower. He didn’t drag out the neatly folded bedding that they’d shared so often though, Stiles noticed.

 

 It was as homely inside as out. It was clean, a little cluttered with some dishes left on the side and in the sink but cosy and smelling of his dad. Lived in. There were some books in the alcove beside the fire, one worn and open on the coffee table.

 

 Stiles drank it all in, imagining his father living here thinking Stiles was gone. His chest felt tight. Then he found himself looking at Derek, standing in the doorway of his dad’s house and watching him as if only Stiles could tell him his next move.

 

 “You’ll bring the pack by for dinner tonight?” his dad asked, his voice breaking the quiet crisis burning between them. “I want to thank you all; you brought my boy home safe.”

 

 There was the barest tilt to Derek’s head that Stiles was sure only he noticed, a light in his eyes that never moved from Stiles’s face.

 

 “He brought himself home safe,” Derek said, “but we’ll be here, yes, thank you.” Then he was turning toward the door and Stiles felt a rush of panic, knowing Derek was giving him space, time, was holding back in case Stiles didn’t want to show to his father what they were. Stiles lunged over the threshold and down the two steps after him regardless, wrapping his arms around him and holding on as if this were the goodbye it felt.

 

 Derek’s arms encircled him in answer, his face turning just a little to Stiles’s cheek. He inhaled softly, before whispering, “I’ll be back in a few of hours.”

 

 But it just felt all wrong, like this was it and Stiles had never felt weaker, more pathetic, with legs shaking like a newborn fawn. He wanted to hold to his father and Derek both but he couldn’t. Not right now.

 

 “You’d better,” he warned half-heartedly. With Derek’s answering huff of laughter in his ears, he forced himself to let go. He watched him with tightness in his every muscle as Derek opened his door to the _Camaro_ , watched him hesitate there, catch Stiles’s gaze one last time before climbing in and driving away. It wasn’t until the sound of the engine had utterly faded that Stiles returned to the house.

 

 “You’re close to him, Derek,” his dad said as he shut the front door behind him, though his father didn’t look up from where he was building a fire in the hearth.

 

 “If it weren’t for him I’d have died alone in a tower,” Stiles murmured and perhaps it was the lost tone of his voice, but his father turned to him, seeing something in his face that drove him to his side. Stiles met his dad’s eyes and saw them shining as his own no doubt were. “He’s my friend. He saved my live and I saved his but it’s…it’s more than that, dad, it’s…”

 

 His words broke off and he floundered to find them again, to express himself in a way that made sense but before he could, his dad’s hand caught the back of his neck and had hauled him in close.

 

 Next he knew, his dad’s hoarse, ragged sobs, the sound of a strong man unable to hold it in any longer shook them where they stood. Just there, they held each other, daring the world to try and rip them apart again.

 

At some point they made it to the worn but cosy sofa, where his dad pulled back his usual quiet strength, though he seemed, like Stiles, lighter for the breakdown. It was like a dam that had held the floods at bay had burst and now new life could begin again in their absence.

 

 There they ate pasta from their laps as they talked. They talked about his dad’s duties in the settlement, about the failed attempt of a greenhouse he had out back, about the places Stiles had travelled through as he tried to find somewhere safe to put down roots, about the tower and his ‘luck’. Stiles told his dad about the things he just knew, the way things lasted longer or grew where they shouldn’t, how his luck had kept him alive and how it wasn’t really luck at all.

 

 “So that’s how you know they’re close,” his dad said, glancing at him carefully when Stiles finished telling him all that Derek had shared with him about his ‘spark’. “The bone men.”

 

 Stiles nodded infinitesimally. “Yeah I…yeah.” He pushed the last few mouthfuls of pasta around his plate with his fork distractedly. “I can sort of feel things. Like a survival instinct I guess? I can feel when they’re close, like I felt it when the hunters came after us. I can feel where Derek and the pack are too, pretty much.”

 

 His father paused, his last forkful poised halfway to his mouth and Stiles blinked at him, mind frantically backpedalling as he tried to figure out what had put that curious look on his face.

 

 “What?” he asked cautiously, finishing off his plate to keep his mouth occupied, just in case he needed more thinking time to respond to whatever his dad was about to say.

 

 “You really like Derek Hale, huh?”

 

 Stiles nearly choked on his mouthful.

 

 His dad’s eyes glittered, the lines around them pulling tight with amusement. “Is there…anything there?”

 

 When at last Stiles had finished chewing, he set his plate down on the coffee table and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans without really meeting his dad’s eyes. “I think so,” he managed. “But I was hoping to at least move my stuff into my room before I asked if I could have a boy in it.” He tried for a laugh but his father’s face was serious and the sound died before it really began.

 

 “Stiles.”

 

 A heavy exhale of breath tumbled over Stiles’s lips and he looked up at last. “He…stabilises me. I’m  a better person because of him.”

 

 “Ah, kiddo,” his dad murmured with an embarrassed but gentle expression. In that moment, Stiles was eight again and telling his dad he was going to marry Lydia Martin. “Fallen that hard, huh?”

 

 Stiles gave him the eye, just in case he thought this _was_ the same as confessing his love for an eight-year-old Lydia Martin. He couldn’t even imagine that person anymore, his naivety, his innocence, but though he was world-hardened, he didn’t feel a loss. A lot of that was down to Derek.

 

How did he make his dad understand that?

 

 “He’s…he’s been dealt a shitty hand, you know? Worse than a lot of us, but he just…” Stiles frowned, wondering exactly when he’d forgotten how to talk to people in a way that conveyed his thoughts coherently. “He hasn’t let it become an excuse. He just wants to be better, no matter what. He makes me want to be better, he makes me…” He made the din in Stiles’s head quiet, the cold a long forgotten memory in light of his warmth.

 

 A long silence stretched out between them, until Stiles realised he was worrying the hem of his shirt and forced himself to release it. When he looked up, his father was studying him with a wistful look in his eyes.

 

 “He’s a good man,” his dad said, squeezing his shoulder in a way that Stiles thought was an awkward blessing.

 

 Stiles ducked his head with a nod, looking at his lap, even as he dad held onto him. He didn’t remember talking being so hard, especially not with his dad but definitely not in general.

 

 “Dad,” he whispered, a throwback to the scared child watching the world end over the last television broadcasts. “I can’t… I’m not sure I can blend with people again, be in a crowd without freaking out or talk to someone in a way that makes sense or…”

 

 His dad squeezed his shoulder more firmly, just this side of painful.

 

 “Seeing you again,” his dad began, “it’s like some impossible dream. Everything else? We can work it out.”

 

 Stiles moved forward, wrapping his arms around his dad’s shoulders again, just because, just in case he really was dreaming and when he woke up he’d be gone.

 

 “I think something is about to happen.” His voice was muffled by his dad’s shoulder but he willed him to understand, to trust his gift the same way Derek did.

 

 “I won’t let anything happen to you, Stiles,” his dad promised huskily, cupping the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair affectionately. “We’re together now and nothing has ever breached the walls of this place. It’s going to be alright.”

 

 As the afternoon took hold outside, Stiles blinked blearily to find his dad covering him with a blanket, where he’d obviously dozed off at some point as they’d been talking. He kept silent though, feigning sleep. He snuck glances at his dad as he curled up in the armchair directly next to the sofa where Stiles was stretched out.

 

 He switched the lamp on the end table off and then reached out and carded his fingers through Stiles’s hair. As his arm grew limp with his own encroaching slumber, drawing back a little to rest on the arm of the sofa, Stiles reached up to cover it with his own before he closed his eyes again.

 


	10. Death’s Coronation

Chapter Ten

**Death’s Coronation**

_Everything was on fire. That was all Stiles knew as he blinked his eyes open, throat thick with smoke. His sinuses, his eyes, his lungs burned on inhaling. His face stung with the ferocity of the heat. All he remembered was not being able to sleep, sneaking out of the tent he shared with his dad to sit by the campfire the tents had all been pitched around. But the fire had been extinguished when he’d sat down beside it in the early hours. It didn’t make sense. His mind reeled in a brief surge of confusion, of incomprehension before survival kicked in._

_Stiles rolled to the side, scrambled to his feet just in time to dodge a stampede of fleeing horses, whinnying and screeching for their lives as they fled the flames that consumed everything. Someone must have set the handful of horses they’d brought with them loose in an attempt to save them. Everything was ablaze. The tents their convoy had taken to the night before were all-but lost, like flaming torches in the dawn. The sky was obscured through the smoke and people were running, screaming._

_Stiles felt panic tight in his chest. He coughed hard, pulling the collar of his shirt up over his nose to try and shield himself from it. He staggered sideways, staring in horror at the orange and black hell the world had become while he’d slept._

_“D-Dad?” he choked, his voice almost lost for its hoarseness. He coughed frantically and tried again. “Dad?!” The tent they had shared was nothing but a wall of fire when Stiles staggered towards it and stood there, staring wildly about him for some sign, any sign._

_“DAD?!” His voice broke on that last one. The dark hope that he was dreaming filled him until he felt like he was going insane, like he couldn’t trust his own eyes. This couldn’t happen. This couldn’t happen!_

_Suddenly, he caught movement out of his peripheral vision, or perhaps he just felt something prickle at the back of his neck, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was he turned to look and his stomach dropped, his eyes wide at what he saw._

_Bone, blackness, fiery eyes that even at this distance burned hotter than the fire._

_Stiles staggered back a few steps, his legs useless and paralysed with fear like in a bad dream. Except this was real, so real and the creature was stalking toward him._

_Then a gunshot ripped through the air and Stiles saw his dad off to the side, gun trained on the bone-faced beast._

_“Get away from my son!”_

_But it kept coming. It was coming. Closer and closer, its movements hastening the closer it got. Another gunshot rented the smoke-filled air. The monster spun, its claws knocking Stiles to the hot, ash-covered ground where he lay helpless and dazed as it turned on his father, not even flinching when bullet after bullet punctured its body._

_Stiles screamed as its hulking, impossible shape blocked his father from view. He squeezed his eyes shut when the world turned black and all he could see was his father’s face, streaked with ash as the smoke swallowed him up._

_When his eyes opened, there was Derek, standing over him with that worried, lined expression that belied the alpha scarlet of his eyes. He touched Stiles’s face, caressing his scars that shouldn’t have been there yet. Should they?_

_Then Derek turned, the bone men, an impossible pack of them, towering over him where he crouched. Stiles could practically smell the blood and fire, the scent of charred flesh but it was unreal, what was happening. He hadn’t known Derek. Not…_

_Then slowly, one by one, the bone men lowered themselves to their knees, bodies mostly obscured by the thick smoke, but their skull heads bowed._

_Derek turned to Stiles, eyes still burning red but no longer kind. His face was warped, not him, but caught as if mid-transformation into someone else. He leered down at Stiles’s with fangs that weren’t quite right, as he tossed Stiles’s dad’s badge onto his chest._

 

*

 

 Stiles jerked awake with his throat raw as if he really had inhaled smoke. His breathing was laboured, even as he stared around the room. Movement in the doorway of that momentarily unfamiliar house made him jerk on instinct, but he relaxed at the sight of his dad returning to the room from the kitchen, face worried.

 

Not a memory then, but a dream, one so realistic it had felt like reliving the past. Except for that last part...

 

 A lighter smell of smoke drifted in from the kitchen, not as all-consuming as the inferno of that night and with an indisputable food smell. His dad was making dinner, his dad had singed the dinner by the smell of it. His dad was were. In this house, this safe haven he’d helped to secure against the things of Stiles’s nightmares.

 

 Avoiding his dad’s eyes, Stiles sat up straighter on the sofa, worrying the edges of the blanket in his lap. It had been as if he was reliving that night he’d lost his him. So vivid he’d been able to taste the ash as he fell to the ground. The twist at the end, however, made his stomach churn in a way that had nothing to do with smelling a full meal after so recently waking.

 

 “I’ve dreamed about it all these years,” his dad said quietly, leaning against the doorjamb, oven gloves hanging from his fingers. “About the night I lost you.” His expression was haunted, twisted with pain when Stiles cautiously lifted his eyes. His dad held his gaze for a beat before adding, “I saw you go down. That thing was on me. Melissa drove her car straight into it, knocked it down but it got straight back up and when I tried to find you…”

 

 Slowly, Stiles rose to his feet, approaching his dad like he was a skittish, wounded animal in need of caution. When he stood before him, he reached out, tentatively touching his dad’s arm. He flinched away at the feel of his flesh, mottled, warped and drew back to stare at it. His dad had taken off his sweater while he’d dozed and now stood there in only a t-shirt and worn jeans. His arms were bare to Stiles’s gaze, his touch. They were thick with old burns from upper forearm to bicep.

 

 Stiles could practically picture it, his dad lifting his arm to shield his face from the fire as he stormed in to save Stiles. In that instant, he knew that was what happened. A choked, hurt sound echoed in his throat.

 

 “I looked for you,” his dad whispered, “they had to drag me away Stiles, I swear to God, I…” He winced, turning his head away when Stiles reached for him. “I left you…”

 

 “You thought I was dead,” Stiles tried but his dad turned to glare at him.

 

 “I should have kept searching until I had your body in my arms!”

 

 “And if I’d really burned up in the fire?” Stiles challenged, before adding more softly, “Dad, I wouldn’t have wanted you to die. I would’ve wanted you to go on. This place? The people? There’s no way they could’ve gotten this far without you.”

 

 His dad loosened his stance at last, staring at Stiles limp and tired. “I’m your dad, there’s no one more important than you. I should’ve let the fire swallow me up trying to find you…”

 

 There was such self-loathing in his voice, such utter failure that Stiles’s heart hurt. He blinked and only realised tears were stinging his eyes when they trickled down his cheeks. He stepped forward, wrapping his arms around his dad’s shoulders and buried his face in his neck, holding on tight.

 

 He’d long suspected that his spark had kept him hidden somehow from the bone men once he’d fallen, now he thought it might’ve kept him hidden from his dad too. The spark of magic inside him was a fickle thing.

 

 “You said it yourself, they had to drag you away and I’m glad they did. If you’re looking for blame or disappointment from me, you won’t get it.” He relaxed a little when his dad embraced him in return. “I’ve got you now, that’s all that matters.”

 

 Even if he still felt cold to his bones with the dread his dream had filled him with.

 

 They held onto each other for a little longer, until his dad nodded against his shoulder, squeezed a little harder, then released him. “Our guests will be here soon.” He stepped back from Stiles and turned to head back into the kitchen. As he did so, he called over his shoulder, in an attempt at teasing, “Your man and his pack?”

 

 In spite of the failed attempt at humour, Stiles’s face burned. “Oh my God, don’t call him that, ever. He has like super hearing; he can probably hear you from his house…”

 

 The roasted vegetables were a lost cause but his dad had set himself on a mission to save the meat with some homemade gravy. Stiles waved off his dad’s insistence that he prepare the food solo by pulling the bag of potatoes toward him and searching for the peeler. They could boil some more to go with the meat, it wouldn’t be as good but it’d do.

 

 Stiles was so delighted with the smell of meat cooked fresh, without any cans in sight, by the quiet, if nervous banter of his dad’s company as they moved around the tiny kitchen that it was the best thing he’d ever smelled.

 

 Even so it felt…fragile. He felt on edge. He could feel his dad, he could feel the distant pulse of Derek and the pack’s proximity. He could feel the people in the houses around him, the entire settlement and it wasn’t bad precisely but it was a lot. He kept expecting the world to end all over again.

 

 That’s when he froze. He felt it like a shiver down his spine.

 

 His dad continued to slice the meat, carefully removing the drier parts before soaking the more tender pieces in the gravy. He didn’t realise Stiles was losing it where he stood, breath caught until he turned to help with the vegetables and saw Stiles’s face.

 

 “You okay, kiddo?”

 

 Stiles’s lips moved soundlessly and he moistened them as he tried to remember how words worked. In the end, his dad pried the peeler out of his hands and Stiles managed to recover himself enough to meet his eyes.

 

 “They’re here.”

 

 His dad frowned. “Derek and the others?” He turned to head for the door but Stiles scrambled ahead of him, blocking his path, heart pounding as if he’d run a marathon.

 

 “No, not Derek, not…” His throat felt too tight for breath. “They…it’s _them_. They’re here, I can feel it.” Somewhere in the settlement. Somewhere close.

 

 His dad’s face softened and he reached for Stiles.

 

 “Stiles, you had a nightmare, you’re skittish. This is a new place–”

 

 “I can _feel_ them, Dad!” Stiles cut across him, a little hysteric now because while his dad was his whole world, Derek would have believed him without question. Derek had trusted Stiles’s senses even when Stiles hadn’t himself. He’d _known_ Stiles in a way his dad hadn’t had the chance to relearn after years of being apart.

 

 “There’s no way they could have gotten into the settlement without setting off some of our alarms,” his dad tried to assure him. “We have a system, magical and human traps in place to alert us.”

 

 “Dad,” Stiles’s voice was firm now, tinged with an edge of barely restrained desperation, pleading. “You gotta believe me. They’re in the settlement somewhere.”

 

 In that moment, Stiles saw the change. It was the sheriff looking at him, not his father. He studied Stiles carefully, as if judging if he really was just a scared ‘kid’ or someone who knew danger was close. He reached for his jacket and tossed Stiles his.

 

 “Get your shoes on. Chris should be on backup still,” his dad said, “I’ll go to his, we can radio the watch and–”

 

 “No, _no,_ I need to get to Deaton.” He needed to get to Derek. They were meant to do this together, weren’t they? “Deaton has the wolfsbane, we might be able to use it to stop them.”

 

 “Stiles, you can’t go tearing out into the street causing panic, we have to control the situation.”

 

 “I get that, but all the black-ops police stealth organisation in the world is not going to stop them,” Stiles said with a calmness that belied the panic rising in his chest. “You saw it yourself, bullets don’t stop them, fire doesn’t stop them. We need the wolfsbane.”

 

 His dad nodded slowly, clearly thinking. “I need to warn the watch though, we need to try and get people inside for curfew without causing panic. Some of the supernaturals might even feel something is up…”

 

 Yeah, he did, Stiles knew that, he needed to warn them, if only because they needed to let someone else know too, in case they were ambushed on the way to Deatons. He swallowed and with great reluctance suggested, “You go get Chris, I’ll go to Deatons.”

 

 His dad stiffened. “No way in hell am I letting you out of my sight if those things are out there.”

 

 It wasn’t what Stiles wanted either. But the trapped, suffocated feeling was growing, like being trapped between encroaching walks, shifting closer and closer. He drew a breath into too tight lunss and felt the skin on his neck prickle.

 

 They were here.

 

 There was no time.

 

 “We need the wolfsbane or all the caution and preparation in the world isn’t going to mean anything,” he struggled to say, because at some point since he’d woken up on his dad’s couch, he had reverted back to a little kid that just wanted to crawl up in his dad’s lap and let him handle everything. After struggling to surrender any control over his life, it was both liberating and terrifying and utterly useless in this exact moment. He knew, just knew he had to do something. Now.

 

 “Stiles,” his dad said sharply, reached for him, caught his face between his hands and stared right into his eyes. “I won’t let you go again.”

 

 As Stiles’s lips parted in answer, a noise sounded outside. Quick footsteps on the gravel path made them both jerk their heads toward the door. A creak of the boards on the wooden porch at the front. It could only have been seconds but they stretched out into tense, unsteady horror, dread.

 

 Stiles’s dad side-stepped in front of him, drawing his gun from the holster at his waist and aimed for the door. The handle turned and his dad’s gun clicked. Stiles felt his stomach flip. His blood _hummed_ in a way that no bone-faced demon could incite. He surged forward at the same time as the door burst open.

 

 “Dad, no!”

 

 The muzzle of his dad’s gun pressed right between Derek’s eyes and Derek froze, every inch of his body locked in awkward mid-motion. His eyes flicked to Stiles, however, searching him and relaxing despite the gun trained on him.

 

 “Jesus, Derek, did you forget how to knock out there on the road?” Stiles’s dad asked, holstering his gun with an exhale of relieved breath.

 

 “You sense it, right?” Stiles asked Derek, hushed as if their enemy could hear him even then, though he was sure they weren’t that close. Not yet.

 

 Derek gave a stiff nod, glancing out of the doorway and along the path he’d come warily, before looking back to Stiles and his father. “They’re in the walls. I don’t know how. I’ve heard no commotion at the walls, smelled no blood.”

 

 “I need to get to Chris, to the watch,” his dad said again, more agitated with the more seconds they lost.

 

 “Go with dad,” Stiles said quickly, “make sure he gets to Chris’s and then meet me at Deaton’s?”

 

 Derek’s brow dipped into a frown but before he could say a word in answer, Stiles’s dad interjected.

 

 “Absolutely not,” he looked right into Derek’s eyes. “You keep my kid safe, okay?”

 

 Stiles felt his stomach jolt sickeningly, felt his insides clench in negation and he reached for his dad. “No, you can’t, dad you’re–”

 

 “Damn good at my job,” he cut across him firmly, with that expression that had stopped Stiles’s insistences so many times in the past. For just that second, it was like no time had passed at all. “And damn sure that Derek Hale isn’t going to let anything happen to you.”

 

 There was a soft smile, one of hope and a little trepidation, but mostly love as he squeezed Stiles’s shoulder a final time. When he released him, he let the motion carry across to clap Derek on the back. “Look after him, son.”

 

 There was no time to stare after his dad, to nurture the ache in his chest at letting him go so soon. There was no time for any of it.

 

 

The streets were quiet. It was close to curfew and besides which, after a long day of hard work, most people were eager for a meal in their home with their families. Still, Stiles jerked everyt ime someone ambled across their path, his senses, the feeling of impending doom and the urge to run gone haywire. So many people. So much, _too_ much.

 

 “Hey,” Derek whispered as they walked, as they watched the shadows, taking care to walk quickly but not be seen to cause panic. “Your dad is going to be okay.”

 

 Stiles nodded, only just realising how fast his breathing was, how rapid his heart. He wondered if Derek thought it was because of how briskly they were walking, or if he just knew it wouldn’t help, acknowledging Stiles’s unease around so many people, with the bone men so close.

 

 His agitation, his sense of wrongness only grew as they approached the clinic. Stiles found himself walking faster, if only in stubborn contrast to the frantic pulse in his veins, screaming at him to turn the other way. There were lights on inside, but no signs of life in the street. Stiles’s skull was roaring with all the ferocity of a storm on the ocean as he reached for the door, his fingers practically _buzzing_ with static negation. But as he touched the handle, Derek snatched his wrist.

 

 “I can smell blood.”

 

 Stiles forgot how to breathe. Glancing from Derek to the door in the low light, he knew there was no further evidence needed. Something horrible had happened here. “We need the wolfsbane,” Stiles murmured, for Derek’s ears only. “We _have_ to go in.” He made for the door again, but Derek’s grasp on his wrist didn’t waver.

 

 “The back way, alright? This way and let me go first.”

 

 Shadows clung to the alley down the side of the building. They reached skyward like a black hole in the earth and Stiles’s skin itched with all the nasties writhing in it. With what lay ahead. He struggled to keep his breathing quiet, his legs steady as they made their way round to the back entrance, as silently as they could.

 

 Derek’s vision in this form, although not infallible, was better than his. It helped them avoid the boxes stacked at the side, helped Stiles avoid any clumsiness that may give away their position, at least until they approached the back door and the light streaming through the frosted glass there.

 

 They kept low to the ground and paused next to the door, Derek canting his head as if listening. His face wrinkled.

 

 “So much blood,” he whispered to Stiles.

 

 Stiles nodded, trying to calm his racing thoughts. He’d always been good thinking on his feet, but now all he could see in the cloying shadows were the bone men and the chasms of their eye sockets.

 

 It was like looking across a field and seeing their silhouette. He knew they were out there, that they were close but he couldn’t exactly pinpoint them when darkness swept across the horizon. They _needed_ the wolfsbane.

 

 His fingers curled in Derek’s jacket and Derek seemed to understand what it meant, a sense of urgency. Derek set his jaw and reached for the door handle.

 

 “Keep behind me.” Before Stiles could argue, he’d pushed the door open.

 

 The back room, where Deaton clearly worked on his medicines was empty of life. They walked cautiously into the room, Derek edging forward first and listening intently for any sound of company as Stiles took in the apparatus around them. It had been abandoned in the middle of something, that much was clear.

 

 Stiles stepped carefully toward a strange assortment of utensils and frowned at the empty bag of wolfsbane. There was a mortar and pestle, with something that looked like hair clinging to the edges and a burnt mass of pulp, of _nothing_ clinging to the base. There was a vat of clear liquid right next to it. It was clear, except not. When he took another step to the side, the light caught it and it glistened an otherworldly purple.

 

 There were a few vials lined up in a rack to the right. He reached for one, tipping it curiously, but as he raised one up to look at it, he noticed the stain of spilled fluid dripping across the counter top beside the rack and the remains of a smashed vial on the floor. Deaton had been working on something here, something with the wolfsbane and he’d been interrupted.

 

 Foreboding rose thickly in his throat, only intensified by the eerie fluorescent light. He swallowed and turned to look at Derek, to call him over without words but Derek was already out the door and into the hall. The door, Stiles realised when he darted after him, was smeared with blood. The crimson smeared across the floor of the waiting room, though vanished before the door, as if Deaton had been lifted clear of the floor before his attackers had excited – _with_ him.

 

 What the hell had happened here?

 

 Stiles was still staring at the blood, wondering how much Deaton could lose before bleeding out completely, when he realised Derek was still moving, going for the door to the operating room. As soon as Derek pulled the door open, Stiles heard the sounds that must have drawn Derek there. Gerard was still inside, evidently Chris hadn’t found time to move him yet for he was still strapped to the table, muttering reverently to himself.

 

 “Why did they leave you?” Derek snarled at the old man as Stiles came to stand at his side. “Whoever took Deaton, why didn’t they take you too?”

 

 Gerard’s bruised, mottled skin twisted into an ugly smile as he stared up at them. “The unnatural burn first; the humans are only of interest if they get in their way. It was lycanthropy that killed the humans, one way or another. Either directly, with the toxins in their venom or by simply infecting us, turning us and making us of interest to _them_.” He sneered at Derek then. “If your kind had left well enough alone, they might’ve wiped you out entirely and just walked right on by us without noticing.”

 

 “They were here?” Stiles asked, hating how his voice shook. “They took Deaton?”

 

 Gerard didn’t answer him. He looked straight at Derek with all the dark bitterness Stiles had ever seen. “If your uncle hadn’t gone after my daughter in the riot, this never would’ve happened.”

 

 “Your daughter deserved it and so do you. You think Chris is going to speak up for you at your trial? No one will,” Derek promised darkly.

 

 Gerard let out a shrill, cracked laugh. “You still think there’s going to be a trial, boy? When they’re done with this place, it won’t be you at the top of the food chain any longer. It’ll be them. It’ll be her.”

 

 The entire room seemed to go cold at his words. The air heavy with fog, air thick with the inherent wrongness all around them. It was as if _they_ could step into the room at any moment.

 

 Stiles and Derek glanced at each other, but Gerard wasn’t smiling when they looked back. He looked old and haunted and for the first time Stiles saw his bravado falter. He’d been afraid when he’d seen the bone men, even knowing that they mainly went after the supernatural. They could still kill a human and Gerard had been afraid. If he had shown one ounce of contrition, or even guilt, even a second-guess at his life’s work of murdering innocents, Stiles might have even felt empathy for him.

 

 “She?” Stiles breathed shakily.

 

 Gerard looked at the doorway as if he could see something there. Stiles had to double-check himself that something wasn’t lurking there, but it seemed Gerard was simply staring aimlessly, as if lost in his memories.

 

 “You don’t even know what they are, do you?” the old man all-but whispered. “They are the plague on the world, the apocalypse come again but they didn’t raise themselves.” He hesitated, as if speaking of them would summon them back into the room.

 

 Stiles couldn’t help but shift sideways so he could keep a view of Gerard, Derek and the door all at once. Having his back to it just felt wrong. Gerard’s voice was as it had been in the bathroom of that abandoned motel. He was haunted by what he remembered and if this insane monster was afraid, Stiles didn’t think the sickly sense of foreboding in his gut could be wrong.

 

 “When the alpha pack revealed themselves, my Kate went after them.” Gerard’s face took on a  wistful, almost fond look. “She was so smart. She made it her life’s work to know everything there was to know about the things we hunt. She knew things even I didn’t but when she came back from her hunt for the alpha pack she was…”

 

 His expression twisted. “I thought she was disappointed, because she hadn’t been able to find them, not with the chaos that gripped the world. But she was…different. Then we showed the people of your town what you truly were, the riots came and your uncle shot her. And as I knelt at her side, holding my baby girl in my arms, I realised…she wasn’t dying.”

 

 Stiles felt his insides drop, felt his unease turn to iron-weighted dread in the pit of his stomach.

 

 “She was healing. She’d been bitten on her hunt for the alphas and she wasn’t dying and I realised what she was. I tried to follow our traditions, our honoured way of dealing with that plague, but she escaped.” His head snapped up then, his arms, his legs fighting the bonds of the straps as if he’d jerked out of his reverie. His eyes were on fire with hatred, with anger and with fear all at once. “But what it took me a long time to realise, was that she hadn’t become a werewolf.”

 

 “How is that possible?” Stiles asked.

 

 “Sometimes the shape you take,” Derek said tersely, through a clenched jaw, “it changes, depending on the person you are. It’s rare.” He focussed on Gerard. “So what is she? _Where_ is she?” He sounded as if he were struggling not to hyperventilate.

 

 “Poor little Hale pup, lost in the woods all alone,” Gerard goaded, “you were never meant to be alpha, were you? You never learned the things you were meant to. You don’t have a clue what you’re dealing with.”

 

 Something in Derek snapped. He threw himself forward, arms braced on the gurney either side of their prisoner’s and a roar ripped from his throat. His eyes flashed, fangs bared as his enraged, animalistic sound made the very walls quake long after they died. Breathing hard, in an effort to control his anger, Derek stared right into Gerard’s face.

 

 “Kate had always been obsessed with the darkest creatures in your world,” Gerard whispered. “The scarier the better. It turns out one of her favourites was real.”

 

  _The bone men._

 

 “When I saw them on the last news stories, before communications died out completely, I knew it was her. She’d found them, collected them, loyal servants that could only be raised by what she’d become.”

 

 “And what is that, exactly?” Stiles asked.

 

 Gerard went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “They’re called beserkers. Not much is known about them, but I do know the feats of darkness Kate had to have gone to to raise them. When I saw them rise up, I knew I had to kill her. A man has to deal with his own mistakes.”

 

 Stiles was suddenly struck by the memory of Gerard out on the road that first time they’d met and wondered if their scouts, their knowledge of the supernatural had allowed them to track the bone men, who had been after Stiles, at the time. He thought of the way the wildlife had fled, and thought a trained hunter who knew what to look for likely wouldn’t have missed the signs.

 

 They’d probably stumbled across Cora and the others, then Stiles and Derek completely by accident. They had only been an afterthought, a reminder of the ‘curse’ that took his perfect daughter, the one person he’d ever come close to caring about besides himself.

 

 “How can you call your children mistakes so easily?” Stiles demanded, even though he knew it was hopeless. Gerard was hopeless, beyond salvation. “What is this world worth? What is the point in being alive if you’ve got no one who loves you to share it with you? If you’re so filled with hatred and bitterness that it consumes you? That’s not living.”

 

 Derek shifted back to regard their prisoner then. “The beserkers weren’t expressly sent after you, Kate doesn’t know you’re here,” he said darkly. “What do you think she’ll do to you when she realises you are? The one person she ever trusted, the person who let her down, tried to kill her.”

 

 The fear consumed Gerard then and Stiles saw a dark look of satisfaction on Derek’s face.

 

 “Fitting, your own precious daughter who passed judgement on my family with you, will judge whether you live or die,” Derek said, reaching for the straps, “and distract her enough that we can kill her when she’s done.”

 

 Stiles watched it all happen in slow-motion, yet like a bad dream, he couldn’t jerk his body forward fast enough to stop it.

 

 As soon as Derek released the strap holding Gerard’s torso down, the old man struck, the glint of a pocket knife he swept out from his sleeve caught the fluorescent light. It flashed in their only warning before it plunged into Derek’s throat.

 

 Derek gave a spasm, hands going instinctively for his throat as he toppled sideways.

 

 Gerard snarled as if he was the werewolf, reaching for the straps over his legs as Stiles darted to Derek’s side. Derek was hunched on his knees and flopped back clumsily as Stiles reached him, expression twisted with shocked pain as he grasped the knife with shaking fingers. The bloodied stainless steel clattered to the floor. choked, gurgling sounds ripped out of Derek’s lips as blood spilled over them and his fingers as he clasped his neck.

 

 “You’re okay,” Stiles panted, hand smoothing over his hair, his shoulder in frantic reassurance. “It’s just steel, you’ll be okay. You’ll heal. You’ll _heal_.” But that didn’t stop the pain, the hopeless gasps for air.

 

 Stiles had never felt more helpless.

 

 Gerard scrambled free of the table, making for the door but Stiles was on him. Incensed, he threw himself at him, tackling him to the floor. They landed with a hard thump that knocked the air from Stiles’s lungs but he didn’t stop. They struggled until Stiles crouched over him, punching him across the jaw with a satisfying crunch that made his knuckles ache.

 

 Gerard struck back, many years his senior but still strong and he struck Stiles hard on the side of his head, making his ears ring and his head spin, just long enough for him to peel sideways and catch his head on the doorframe. Gerard hit him again to down him, lunging to wrap his gnarled but powerful hands around Stiles’s throat and squeeze.

 

 Stiles choked, spluttered as his hands clawed at Gerard’s hands, his face, tried to twist and gouge his eyes, _anything_ to get him off but Gerard jerked his head and just bore all his weight down on Stiles’s neck. Stiles felt his lungs burn, felt the pressure build in his head until his eyes bulged and he thought they might burst right out of his head. His neck felt like it might collapse from the weight on it and his vision faded, hands falling, twitching uselessly at his sides.

 

 Then his fingers curled round something. Long and worn, familiar. He snatched it up and locked it between his fingers as he’d done so many times. He flailed but lucked out as he looped it round Gerard’s neck and pulled tight. Hard. The red string glared dazzlingly bright in his blurring vision. It was worn but strong and he swore it _vibrated_ in his grasp as if it were a livewire.

 

 Gerard gave a spasm as if he _had_ been electrocuted, as if Stiles’s thoughts had sent current through the faded cord pulled tight around his throat. He went limp as his body quivered out of his control and Stiles felt a ragged scream tear from his wounded, bruised throat as he pulled as tight as he could. He felt the heat from the current that should _not_ have been possible pulse through the fibres. The string burst into sharp sparks of fire before fading into nothing, with no proof it had ever been there except for the deep scorch lines in Gerard’s throat as he toppled sideways, still jerking, mouth moving with nothing more than useless, choking sounds. Then he fell still, lifeless eyes staring up at the faded white ceiling.

 

 Stiles remained perfectly still except for his heaving, gasping breath, staring at him as adrenaline rushed through him. He felt shaky with it, dizzy as air flooded back through his lungs.

 

 Derek had said he thought his spark was inspired by life, by preserving life, extending it, perhaps that was true but now Stiles thought it was less literal than that. His life had been on the line and now Gerard was dead. It could have been contributed to his supernatural luck that the string had tumbled out of his pocket into his fingers, but the way a cord of string had sent electric shocks through it was undeniable evidence that he’d never seen before. It was impossible without a spark, his spark.

 

 Maybe he could do more than fix things, burn candles and make plants grow, after all. If they survived this.

 

 His throat _ached,_ breath coming through it in agonising, raspy heaves. As he stared at Gerard’s body, he wondered how damaged he was, how bad a person it made him that he didn’t feel any guilt or wrongness. He felt relieved. He felt _justice_ that someone who had caused so much pain and death was finally dead. Just how fucked up did that make him?

 

 Movement to his left startled him but he relaxed at the sight of Derek edging toward him, fully shifted, a black wolf with blazing red eyes that pressed his way into Stiles’s space without any preamble. He’d likely changed to try and fast-forward the healing process. Blood was smeared across his throat but he seemed healed when Stiles tentatively touched the area. He wanted to tell him how much he scared him, how he’d thought that was it for them both but his throat hurt so much and the adrenaline still had hold of him.

 

 Derek let out a stream of low, whining yips as he pressed in close, licking at Stiles’s throbbing temple, cheekbone and ear. He nuzzled frantically at his jaw, nudging it up to lap at his neck, the pressure of his nose making Stiles wince initially, but then hum in relief as the throbbing pain ebbed away. He’d wondered more than once before, if Derek’s pain-relieving touch was limited to his human form. Now he knew. He wrapped a shaking arm around Derek’s shoulders, stroking and cuddling into the warm black fur, steadied himself with his strength, as Derek did the same with him.

 

 The whining and the nuzzling grew softer as Stiles’s pain receded, as his breathing evened out. Then, Derek’s human nose was pressing into his throat feather-light.

 

 “‘M sorry,” Derek rumbled huskily, “the healing, brings my instincts close to the surface.”

 

 Stiles nodded against his forehead slowly, regarding him with clear vision when he drew back to meet his eyes. He felt something in his tender throat tremble as he whispered hoarsely, “I killed him.”

 

 Derek didn’t look away from his face. “I know.”  


 But he didn’t get it, did he? “I killed him and he was trying to kill me, he pretty much is responsible for all your family dying but I didn’t…” His throat didn’t hurt, thanks to Derek, but it still felt impossible to make his voice sound normal, louder than this injured rasp. He reached up to touch his neck where he guessed there must be marks. “I’m not sorry.”

 

 And Derek hauled that bastard’s ass all the way up here so he could have a fair trial and Stiles had just…

 

 Derek didn’t even blink. “I’m not either.” He must’ve seen the way Stiles made to argue or remind him just why they’d brought Gerard here in the first place, because he reached forward to cup Stiles’s face, hold him still as he pressed their foreheads together. “Stiles,” he breathed, “I…”

 

 Suddenly, noise like Stiles had never heard ripped through the clinic. He jumped in shock and the howling, the screeching, the sound of the animals that had been staying in the clinic overnight screaming as if their lives depended on it. Both he and Derek staggered to their feet, moving toward the room where the animals were kept but before they could even touch the door, the distant sounds of shouts from outside drew their gazes to the door. There was something happening outside.

 

 Stiles moved as if drawn toward the front door, except it was the opposite. It was like watching a scary movie when you were a kid, even though you knew you wouldn’t sleep for weeks after. It was like watching through your fingers and not being able to stop even though your entire body was bunched up with dread. So tight it hurt.

 

 He didn’t stop moving, even though his spark was telling him to turn the other way.

 

 Derek was at his side as they stepped out into the night, the clinic animals wailing behind them as if in warning. They followed the sound of the commotion to where the street twisted, to the small clearing by the gates that Parrish had welcomed them into when they’d first arrived. Together they clung to the shadows, watching the people on their knees in a rough circle, glancing around fearfully, as much as they dared. There were solar lights scattered around the road that provided a dim, eerie bluish light, only just enough to see the captives by.

 

 Stiles squinted. He couldn’t make out his dad or Chris in the handful of people, so they must have evaded capture. Parrish was among them, so most likely just the people unlucky enough to have been caught out by the gates? The curfew had kept most people inside, safe for now and blissfully unaware, unless they were to come looking. God he hoped they had more sense. He hoped his dad had escaped notice somewhere, were forming some calvary or…

 

 He cursed when he recognised Cora and the rest of the pack there but his insides leapt in recognition of the last man to be tossed into the circle. His dark-head was bowed, his face streaked with blood as he steadied himself, pushed himself back onto his knees beside Parrish.

 

 Holy fucking shit. _Scott_! Stiles made to move forward on instinct at the sight of his best friend, his _brother_ but then the shifting, nightmarish backdrop froze him where he stood.

 

 Shadows moved across the feeble streams of light from the solar lanterns scattered around.

 

 Stiles felt his blood run cold.

 

 Derek went deathly still beside him and for a heartbeat, he was sure neither of them breathed.

 

 The mist of early evening billowed around them as they slowly circled the prisoners like prey. It was like they were gliding, not part of this mortal plain at all but ghostly phantoms stalking the people like spectres waiting to reap their souls.

 

 Stiles saw the light glint off pale bone, saw their claws glint in the darkness and when one twisted its grotesque skull to glance at one of the prisoner’s, he glimpsed the red flare of its eyes and squeezed his own shut tight. Just for a moment he thought of the nightmares he’d woken himself from in the same way, clenching his eyes shut until he felt the grasp of sleep fall away and jerked awake to relieving reality. Only this _was_ reality.

 

 This was so very real.

 

 Derek reached for him without tearing his eyes away from the scene, fingers curling around Stiles’s arm.

 

 “This is the last of their guard?” A woman’s voice, husky but firm cut through the night. She moved among the prisoner’s, assessing. No sound came from her bone-faced servants, from the beserkers, but she tilted her head as if they had. “Bring them then, we’ll take care of the civilians after we’re done here.”

 

 “What do you want from us?” Scott demanded, moving to push himself up from the ground, only to be held in  place by one of the woman’s unearthly soldiers.

 

 The woman gave a little noise of amusement. “No reading ahead, sweetheart, even if you did give us the in we needed.”

 

 That was how they’d gotten in. Somehow, they’d snuck in or threatened their way in or _…something_ when Scott had returned.

 

 Suddenly, the sounds of a struggle filtered into Stiles’s ears and he moved as if to rise but Derek’s grip on his arm held him in place as another beserker stepped into the diminutive light of the square and shoved two men down into the clutch of people. Chris and his dad.

 

 The woman let out a low whistle. “Chris, you’re looking old.”

 

 Chris jerked against the hold of his captor ineffectually, glaring up at the woman as she came to stand before him. “And you’re looking as sane as ever.”

 

 The woman gave a laugh and grasped her brother’s hair, tugging his head back. She leaned down to look straight into his eyes. “Look long and hard, big brother, my face is going to be the last thing you see before I take everything you’ve built here.”

 

 At that moment, one of the beserkers snapped its head to the side – to where Derek and Stiles were hiding.

 

 The woman reached out, splaying her long fingers across the beserker’s upper arm, letting her touch linger with a clear satisfaction that she could touch such danger. “Bring them to me, pet, but don’t taste them yet.”

 

 The creature surged like an enraged bull released from its gate, charging for them with no ghostly grace but with animalistic ferocity. Like a trained dog let loose.

 

 “Run!” Derek cried out. “Stiles, run!” But before they could do more than scramble to their feet it was on them.

 

 Its claws struck out, snatching Stiles’s jacket up in its powerful fist and catching the flesh beneath with deep gouges. Stiles snarled in pain at the same time as Derek dove for the beast, eyes flaring alpha red in the dark, teeth bared. With its grip on Stiles not wavering an inch, without expunging any effort whatsoever, the beserker shoved Derek back against the wall of the building that had shadowed them moments before. Its free arm rose and Stiles’s breath caught in horror at the sight of the blade of sharp, jutting bone that projected from its arm, mere seconds before it plunged into Derek’s chest.

 

 Derek jerked, going stiff, a grunt of winded shock the only sound spilling from his lips. The beserker kept its arm in place for a long moment and when it drew back, Derek slumped, blood spilling over his chin with a sickening gurgling sound that put the moment before, back in the clinic with the knife to change.

 

 “No!” Stiles screamed struggling, writhing in his captor’s grasp but he couldn’t stop the creature from striking again, plunging the skewer into Derek’s chest over and over until he doubled over in defeat on the floor, his eyes flickering from alpha red to mortal green, colour lost in the darkness.

 

 The beserker dragged a struggling Stiles and a limp Derek over to the circle, tossing them both down with the others. Derek lay in a heap beside Stiles, unmoving, while Stiles was urged to his knees. The beserker pressed hard on Stiles’s shoulders when he tried to fight until he let out a cry of anguish, his arm twisted at an impossible angle.

 

 This close, he could see Deaton was one of the captives, practically hanging from the grip of the beserker holding him, face gaunt, dripping with blood. Stiles tried to catch his eye, to gauge if he was alright somehow, but he seemed almost unconscious and Derek’s broken, shredded chest was heaving with laboured, wet noises.

 

 The woman stepped closer, nudging at Derek’s chin with her toe to nudge his face into a more accessible position.

 

 “Don’t touch him!” Stiles spat, drawing her gaze to him, throat raw.

 

 Her eyes glittered in the pale light.

 

 “Oh, honey-sweetie-baby, don’t worry, he’s not my type.”

 

 Stiles sneered. “What, is he too old for you now? Maybe there’s some underage boys around here for you.”

 

 Her smile didn’t falter. She chuckled around the wide, eerie expression as she stared down at Derek. “Ooo, he’s _fiery,_ Derek. He has more balls than you ever did. You were too shy to even be seduced properly…”

_“She got me to trust her. She turned out to be a hunter and tried to burn my house to the ground with my family inside it…”_

_“She used you to get to your family…”_

 

 “Kate,” Derek choked out, weak and distant. “Don’t…hurt him….”

 

 Kate. Stiles had deduced as much but it still felt like a slap to have Derek confirm it with his own lips. She really was alive and somehow controlling the beserkers.

 

 They were doomed. There was nothing else for it. They were all going to die here in the dark.

 

 Kate made an expression of faux hurt, puckering her lips in a dismayed pout. “Sweetie, I’m not going to hurt him. I’m going to make him so strong nothing will ever hurt him again. I’m going to make them _all_ strong and you’re going to help me, Derek.”

 

 Derek let out a groan, extended claws digging weakly into the ground as he tried in vain to push himself up on shaking arms.

 

 Kate let out a low laugh and kicked him hard in the chest until he rolled back onto his back at Stiles’s side.

 

 “Stop!” Stiles snarled, with all the ferocity of the supernatural beasts around him, but with a tone dangerously low. Kate turned her head to look at him just as Stiles felt _something_ crackling through his veins. It hurt, the intensity of it and Stiles thought of the string he’d all-but summoned and the way he’d chocked and electrocuted Gerard to death in a way he never should have been able to. He didn’t think he’d be lucky enough to pull it off again but he couldn’t bear to watch Derek suffer, watch the pool of blood grow thicker and thicker, creep across the dirt toward his knees. He’d tear her apart or die trying if she touched him again.

 

 “Don’t,” he muttered darkly. “Don’t you touch him.”

 

 Kate leaned down a little, catching Stiles’s face between her fingers and twisting his head this way and that. Her grip was wincingly strong, even with human nails digging into his chin as he glared up at her. “You’ll make a fiery pet. Powerful, with an attitude like that. I think we’ll turn you first.”

 

 As she spoke, another beserker stepped up beside the one still maintaining a grip on Stiles and together they pinned him in place on his knees with a hand on either of his shoulders.

 

 “When my own father tried to kill me, when lycanthropy started killing everything, one way or another and all the other creatures started crawling out of the woodwork,” Kate began darkly, straightening up. She turned to one of the few bone men standing in the rough circle of captives alongside her, holding a heavy, worn looking leather bag.

 

 “When I realised what I was, I knew the only way to survive was to wield a weapon even the monsters were afraid of.”

 

 Like she’d done before, she trailed her fingers admiringly, possessively, _smugly_ along the beserker’s powerful arms, this one wearing braces of leather and a skull in the shape of a wolf. Her long, elegant fingers smoothed up over its shoulder to where crude, leather armour and wolf hide covered its body and she flexed her fingers, until she was digging _supernatural_ claws into its flesh.

 

 “I knew the stories _so_ well. Maybe that’s why I became what I am, instead of a werewolf,” she murmured, almost to herself. When she drew her hand back, she stared, fascinated yet distant at the beserker’s blood oozing down her fingers. “I raised them with my new powers, used them to create more from the wolves and other monsters, until I had an army. They’re all across the continent, changing what they find, killing what they cant change. My eyes, my ears, my guards. My _people_.”

 

 She straightened then, as if coming back to herself from a reverie. Snatching the bag from the beserker, she stepped back to Stiles and smeared her bloody thumb across his forehead then each of his cheeks, anointing him with its blood. It was surprisingly hot. Almost scalding hot.

 

 When she spoke again, Kate sounded determined, fierce. Hungry for violence. “They can only be born of something supernatural but _you,_ Bambi, your spark is strong enough to make the change.”

 

 From the corner of his eye Stiles saw his dad throw himself forward into the dirt to escape his captor’s grasp, scramble to his feet and seize one of the solar lanterns embedded on spikes in the earth. He dragged it up with a grunt and rounded on Kate. “Stay away from my son!” he cried, swinging it at her head. The glass cracked across her skull, spilling to the earth in hundreds of dazzling pieces but Kate only turned to fully face him, amused surprise on her face.

 

 “Maybe things would’ve been different if Chris and I had had a father like you,” She mused. When the sheriff lunged again with the spiked end, Kate caught it mid-motion, yanking it clean out of his hands and shoving him hard back into the beserker that had surged up behind him. “You’ll make a great soldier too, fierce, loyal, if you survive Derek’s bite.”

 

 “He’d never bite my dad,” Stiles snapped, as Derek gave a choking snarl of protest around a mouthful of blood.

 

 Kate gave a deep laugh. “I don’t need consent, doe-eyes, not yours, your father’s or _Derek’s_ …”

_You never did,_ Stiles thought darkly, at the same time as Kate finished…

 

 “…I just need his fangs.” She reached into the bag she held then and Stiles’s blazing hatred, the flames of his anger froze in shards of icy fear at the sight of what she withdrew.

 

 The material of the bag dropped to the dirt, forgotten as Kate lifted the wolf’s skull into the air, like a crown at a coronation. “We caught and cleaned this one just yesterday, so fresh,” she crooned.

 

 “No!” Derek choked out, pushing up on weak, shaking arms again. “T-Take me! Take me instead.”

 

 “There’s no instead Derek,” Kate said dismissively, “just first, second, third…but you’ll be last, when everyone here is under my control, one way or another. Then you’ll be mine just like them.”

 

 Stiles struggled against the hold of the beserkers, panting hard, blood and electricity pulsing through him, but right now the spark wasn’t going to save him, it was going to enable him to be turned into one of the beasts that had killed everything the lycanthropy hadn’t. As panic snapped around his chest like a steel-jaw trap, his eyes locked on the hollows of the skull’s eyes, the dark, dead prison that would frame his vision forever.

 

 Kate was chanting, something low and archaic, foreign to his ears.

 

 Nausea burned up his throat and he clenched his mouth shut, because he could see his end, rising in slow, torturous inevitability above his head but he wasn’t going to beg. It would be useless anyway and it was the last vestige of free-will, of control he had to deny her it. But he still winced, shrunk as far down in the beserkers’ hold as he could go.

 

 He glimpsed Scott and the pack, struggling as surely as his dad, crying out, snarling like beasts in dark promise at the threat to their pack. He felt a frisson of comforting belonging as he squeezed his eyes shut against the shadow of his fate. He _felt_ the wrongness of the skull directly above his head, wondered distantly where the fuck Kate had found a wolf’s skull so large, wondered if it was a werewolf and felt bile burn at his tongue.

 

 He screamed at the touch of the cold bone, screamed in fear and desperation even through his throat _throbbed_ in negation, a sound that seemed to carry out endlessly into the night. The pack answered, howling, foreboding cries that melded with his like the haunting melody of his end, carrying him off into oblivion. Then an earth-shuddering roar tore through it all.

 

 The very ground trembled as if under onslaught from a seismic eruption. Stiles’s eyes flew open at the familiarity of it, at the command of his alpha. He felt something dangerously like hope catch in his tight, raw throat at the sight of Derek standing there, at the sight of the beserkers freezing where they stood as if struck.

 

 To his utter disbelief, the beserkers holding him, holding back the others released them.

 

 It was as if they couldn’t help it, Stiles thought, as if the sheer shock of it or something else had subdued them, commanded them to obey. In the opening it gave him, Derek dove for Kate, knocking the skull flying and sending it careening into the darkness. As Kate went down, she screamed in outrage rather than pain and her voice jerked another beserker into action. It dragged Derek off her, raising its arm with the bone spike jutting from it as Derek rolled back up to his feet, but even as it lunged for Derek, Stiles had a split second realisation.

 

 Not _all_ of the beserkers had responded to Kate’s command, not since Derek’s alpha roar had rented the dark like a whiplash. Only a few were listening to her.

 

 Cora, Scott and the others had lunged into movement the second they’d been released, but as they’d attacked, the remaining two beserkers had gone for them. The other beasts stood by, watching like marionettes without their puppeteer, without direction. Until the bone man facing Derek brought his arm down, brought the jut of bone from its arm toward him and another beserker seized its arm, staying the blow.

 

 It was shorter than Derek’s attacker, almost wiry with muscle,and it twisted its boar skull of a head toward its once comrade, before snapping the spike off its arm and jamming it into its throat. It went stiff then collapsed as if its legs had been cut out from under it, landing in a heap in the dirt and moving no more.

 

 It could be kill by one of its own? By its own weapon? Stiles’s mind was reeling where he knelt in the ground even as Derek’s saviour turned its head, slow, steady, looking right at him.

 

 When it took a few steps forward, Stiles frowned at the very _human_ way it moved, the hesitancy, the jittery, uncertain movements. Nothing like that of a mindless slave, built to kill.

 

 Derek took a hesitant step back and the creature halted in its steps, just feet from him. Then, something like recognition broke across Derek’s face. Anguish and confusion like Stiles had only seen when Derek had been reunited with Cora took hold of him and he was visibly lost for how to react. He reached out, hands covered in his own blood and hesitating over the beast’s shoulders, before dropping away, almost defeated.

 

 A lost boy.

 

 “Derek?” he asked, but his voice seemed to fall away from the power of whatever was happening before them.

 

 A low, whining sound echoed from within the boar skull and Derek’s muscles tensed, like it physically hurt him to hear, so soft and sad. He answered with a lost, mournful cry deep in his throat, a sound only the wolf could make.

 

 The light caught the moment, dancing across Derek’s face and the beserker’s skull, just enough for Stiles to see the cracks splitting through the bone. They fractured the smooth, pale surface like fissures breaking the earth, until the skull shattered and the shards spilled to the earth.

 

 Everything stopped, the shock in the darkness palpable at the sight of dark hair spilling down the creature’s – the _young woman’s_ back, the pale skin kissed by the lantern light. She jerked her head around, like a startled animal that had no idea where it was, then stared at Derek with a painfully familiar lost yet hopeful look.

 

 “D-Derek?”

 

 Stiles’s breath caught as his brain made the connection a split-second before Derek spoke.

 

 “ _Laura_?” Derek breathed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more chapter and an epilogue to go. Feel free to make requests for anything you want to see before the end! <3


	11. Connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter my loves, with only the epilogue to go (which I will post shortly after this, mainly because they were originally part of one chapter but it got too long ;)). Thank you so much to everyone who showed their support with this story, whether kudos, comments, emails - all ofit really meant so much to me. Just thank you. There really are no words to express my gratitude for your kindness.  
> Thank you again to Suis0u for permitting me to write this story based on your artwork and premise. Your talents are truly an inspiration and such a joy to look at.  
> I'm taking part in the Steter Reverse Bang and after that have two sterek fics to post too, so please subscribe if that sounds appealing to you. I've thoroughly enjoyed this journey and so in love with this universe, this fandom and the wonderful people in it. I just hope the last chapter and epilogue don't disappoint. Please enjoy :)

Chapter Eleven

**Connection**

The young woman jerked at the sound of Derek’s voice, as if it had been a firework rather than a whisper. Her face was sickly pale, hair sticking to her head and curling down her back in messy tangles, like a wild creature. When Derek reached for her again she flinched but did not back away, the longing clear in her body language as Derek drew her against his chest, carefully, so, so carefully.

 

 She went stiff when Derek’s arms wrapped around her. Then Derek let out a low, plaintive whine and she seemed to melt, burying her head in his neck, tucking it under his chin and gripping him tight, as if she could disappear in his warmth.

 

 “Derek,” she said, voice stronger this time even if it was rough with emotion, the unmistakeable sound of a human being near breaking point.

 

 “Such a cute reunion,” Kate said as she steadied herself on her feet, breathless with an air of forced calm. She was uneasy, Stiles realised, she had even less idea about what had just happened than they had. The other beserkers, except for two, still stood like statues, unmoving. Why only those two? Why had the others stopped but not been healed by Derek’s call?

 

 Stiles looked to Deaton, now curled on the ground at Scott’s side, not moving. Would he know what was happening?

 

 Kate, looking wild now, even more dangerous in her unease, lunged for the beserker she had caressed earlier. She snapped the bone jutting from its arm, wielding it like a knife and it didn’t move, didn’t even flinch as she pushed it to its knees and held the shard of bone just in front of its eye-socket.

 

 “Wanna know which member of your family I’m about to kill, Derek?” Kate shrieked. “Maybe one of your honorary family members? Maybe someone a little closer to home like _Uncle Peter_ or _Daddy_?” Her face twisted into a crazed smile.

A low growl rumbled in Derek’s throat but he didn’t let go of Laura. Cora, the pack had frozen too at the threat but at their hesitation, the remaining beserkers under Kate’s control moved. The one that Boyd, Isaac and Erica had pinned together threw them back, seizing Isaac by the throat and lifting him clean off his feet while the other moved to Stiles, seizing a fistful of his hair and tipping his head back until it felt like his neck might snap.

 

 “What do you think Derek, do you wanna take the chance?” Kate turned her gaze slowly around the circle, as if listening for something, before focussing on Scott. “You, you care about Derek’s little spark.” It was a statement, not a question as she jerked her chin toward Stiles.

 

 Scott remained silent but Stiles had been around werewolves long enough to know his heartbeat, his body language would give him away regardless, if not Stiles’s own when he’d looked for Scott when he’d been dragged into the circle.

 

 “Kill Derek and save your friend.”

 

 Scott flinched. “Why me?” he asked through gritted teeth, clearly just trying to keep her talking, enough to give someone an opening.

 

 Kate tightened her hold on the shard of bone in her grasp. “Don’t fuck with me, little wolf. The alpha spark can either be willed to another member of the pack or taken in battle. If you kill him, you’ll take his spark. You’ll be the alpha.”

 

 “So you can make Scott turn all the humans, ready to be made into beserkers and Derek can be killed, right?” Stiles managed through his already wounded throat twisted at an unnatural angle. “You hope whatever hold he’s gotten over the others will die with Derek?”

 

 Kate sneered. “It’s something I wasn’t betting on, sure, but it’s easily solved.” She looked hard at Scott. “Kill the alpha or I’ll cut him apart piece by piece while you watch.”

 

 “Scott, don’t!” Stiles choked. The beserker holding him jerked his head back so hard his vision spun. “She’ll just turn me when it’s done. I’d rather die than be a beserker.”

 

 “No!” His dad cried out, at the same time as Scott shook his head vehemently, eyes squeezed shut as if that could make the situation disappear.

 

 A prickling sense of awareness gnawed at his skin then, making Stiles strain his eyes to look sideways without jerking on the already agonising grip on his hair. There was something building to his left, power, energy and it took him a moment to realise what was happening.

 

 Deaton’s arm that was splayed across the ground twitched, fingers flexing, struggling as if it were taking everything he had to move them. They curled where they lay on the ground, digging in, twisting subtly, working deeper. It was only when Stiles felt an accompanying _pulse_ of _something_ that he realised what it was he was seeing.

 

 It was too dark to make out the movement, he shouldn’t have been able to see it but he could. In that moment, he saw Deaton that bit brighter than the others, not a glaring, dazzling light but a subtle difference, like tweaking the exposure on a picture. He wasn’t seeing Deaton’s fingers burrowing into the earth with laboured efforts, he wasn’t seeing his lips moving from this distance in the dim light, he was seeing the _energy_ , the supernatural spark from everyone there moving through him as he channelled it through himself.

 

 Stiles’s senses spiralled, _roared_ in his already pounding skull. He felt a humming, burning current roaring up from every supernatural being around him, surging like angry tides and crashing together in a _deafening_ crescendo. It was like he’d tapped into something somehow and now he couldn’t turn it off. His chest felt too tight, his head too small a space to take it all in. The very ground beneath him was growling ominously but it felt like he was the only one who could hear it.

 

 Scrunching his face up, he struggled to close it all off, spinning through a blinding void until it all became too much. His eyes flew open at the same time as his mouth warped into an anguished scream. Just through it all he could hear his dad calling for him, hear Derek saying his name, Kate’s panicked cry of “ _what are you doing_?” But he couldn’t make anything quiet enough to remember how to form words.

 

 Then, as suddenly as it had all come, it silenced. Like the flame of a candle wiped out by a gust of breath it all died, but it hadn’t. He could still feel it, flowing through his veins like adrenaline, like he wanted to run with the power he felt, like Deaton’s fingers had pushed the energy from every supernatural creature in the vicinity up through his knees resting on the dirt.

 

 Stiles was deafened by the quiet, broken only by his laboured breaths. It could have only been for a moment but he couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat, only Deaton’s soft, broken voice as he whispered, “Stiles, _now_.”

 

 But what was he supposed to do? He felt the weight of the vial he’d picked up in the clinic in his pocket but it was only one tiny dose, not enough for Kate _and_ the beserkers she had left under her control.

 

 In that second of hesitation, movement bolted from the side and slammed into the beserker holding Stiles, sending all three of them tumbling to the ground. Stiles scrambled round to see a dark grey wolf, but not one he recognised, savaging the beserker on the ground like a rabid dog. He heard Derek’s voice, felt his jerk of movement and knew the wolf was Laura, saving him, lashing out at the things that had taken her, or just snapping in a sense of danger.

 

 The beserker didn’t scream but Laura’s snarling filled the night, wet with blood. The beserker sank his claws into her fur but she didn’t stop. Then, suddenly, a pack of wolves were rushing passed Stiles. Cora, Boyd, Erica and Isaac all lunged for the creature with its claws in Laura, their howls ringing through the darkness. It was strong, _they_ were strong but it wouldn’t die no matter how they tore into it.

 

 Out of his peripheral vision, as he pushed himself up from the ground, Stiles saw people approaching from a distance, no doubt alerted by the noise.

 

 Chris was on his feet, dragging another lantern from the earth with a grunt, as Stiles’s dad had done, and surging toward Kate. The other beserker caught him before he could reach her, swatting him aside like a bug and sending him sprawling into the dirt. Stiles’s dad moved toward him, flanked by Scott and Stiles moved his gaze back to Kate a second too late.

 

 He watched in horror as she rounded on Derek, her pale skin darkened with mottled, almost cat-like markings across her face and arms that looked obsidian in the dimness. Her eyes, unnatural yellow-green _gleamed_ in the low light and her fangs distorted her mouth as she brought her claws down across Derek’s face with a roar of rage, of desperation.

 

 Stiles staggered unsteadily to his feet. Everything still hurt, everything was still moving, his senses hyperaware of every heartbeat there, not because he could hear it but because he could _feel_ them. Even the bone men, he felt their lives like they were brushing passed him with every movement. It was as if he were wading through a sea of long grass that swayed around his legs, grasping at him like beckoning, cunning fingers.

 

 He tried to steady himself, knew somehow that Deaton had given his already present awareness a push, heightened it somehow but didn’t know why. Derek was howling, Kate’s claws embedded in his chest even as it took the pack, his dad, Chris, Scott, _everyone_ to contain the two bone men still responsive to her, while the others just _stood_ there like an army of the dead.

 

 Why?

 

 He clasped the vial he’d taken from the clinic in his hand. One vial imbued with wolfsbane and who knew what else. For Kate?

 

 Kate’s teeth sank into Derek’s shoulder, ripping bloody carnage into the air and Stiles took a step forward, clasping his fingers around the vial. “Hey, Kate!” he cried out, not knowing what else to do. She snapped her head toward him as he added, “I choked your ol’ dad to death until his eyes bulged. Was that how he tried to kill you when he realised what you were?”

 

 Bared fangs flashed at him, red with Derek’s blood. Kate dove for him. Stiles couldn’t stop her even if he tried. She slammed to the ground with him, pinning him with her strength, covering him like a starved predator, hot breath, metallic with the smell of blood steaming over his face until his stomach lurched. Her claws dug into his aching throat and his cry of pain cut off as she grunted for breath above him, heavy with madness, like that of a cornered animal about to be slaughtered.

 

 “Look at Derek’s pretty face as he watches you _die_ ,” she seethed, voice thick with fangs and bloody spittle as she pressed her claws into his throat. They just sank into him as if his flesh were butter. It felt impossible. Stiles let out a gurgling, shocked cry, fingers twitching. It felt like she was reaching into his spine through his throat and he was frozen with it. His stolen breath was locked in her grasp and he wondered if this was really how it was going to end.

 

 He clawed at her hands ineffectually, scrabbling on instinct without any real strength and she grinned down at him. Derek’s blood wept from the corner of her lips onto the mess of his throat. She didn’t even blink when he started batting at her face, pushing up at it as if he were trying to get her away. Her sneering, feral grin didn’t die though, not until he clumsily shoved the vial into her mouth and jammed his palm up against her jaw with all the strength he had left until the glass cracked.

 

 The blood-curdling sound she made through her clenched teeth sounded so far away, echoing and distant in his ears, as did the wet grunt of pain as her claws ripped free of his neck as she reached for her own mouth. But before she could even try to spit out the poison, an arm locked around her neck, pulling up tight to keep her jaw firmly sealed.

 

 The dark shadow that fell over Stiles was twisted. He blinked, confusion starting to set into his fuzzy head at the grotesque shape of it. He tried to clear his vision. Sound was starting to fade completely into the encroaching mist and he found himself staring up at a bear’s skull, but the eye-sockets did not glow with a crimson light. No, they flared beta blue.

 

 Stiles watched as black tendrils swept up Kate’s arms, her face, as her eyes bulged and dark fluid streamed like tears from the corners of her eyes and mouth. Above Stiles she struggled, claws digging into the arm around her throat but the strength of the bone man was inescapable. Eventually, the darkness bleeding from her eyes consumed them entirely, until they were utterly black and devoid of life. She went limp in the beserker’s arms but it held onto her a fraction longer, as if just to be sure, before letting her drop to the side.

 

 The bear-headed creature stared down at Stiles, towering over him like an ominous spectre, even as Stiles felt himself being pulled this way and that by Derek, by his dad as they reached his side. His dad was pressing his hands to the bloody mess of Stiles’s throat, Derek was draining the pain from him that had grown white-hot yet remained so very far away, like the energy Deaton had siphoned into him kept it separate from him.

 

 The energy.

 

 Stiles realised then, as he stared up at the beserker that the fuzziness wasn’t just in his head, it was _everywhere_ , busily buzzing energy like a nest of ants marching through his veins. He felt the pain turn to numbness, then nothingness, like the ache after ice being pressed into flesh for too long. He felt his head stop throbbing, felt the distant anguish in his throat slowly recede under his father’s frantic hands.

 

 The supernatural energy he’d felt connected to in every supernatural being around him was knitting him back together somehow.

 

 Extending life, he wanted to say to Derek, but his throat still wouldn’t work.

 

 As he felt it sweeping through him, distancing him from the world as if he were surveying it all from under water, he saw the cracks in the bear’s skull, saw it shatter without any connecting sound. There was a split second as the shards of useless bone crumbled away, in which he met a pair of vaguely familiar eyes. He made the connection to the few glimpses from long ago, recognised the stunned face of Peter Hale before the man dropped to the ground – at the same time as all the other beserkers fell.

 

 He strained his eyes to see, just about managed to catch a glimpse of Scott standing over another fallen beserker a few feet away with the remnants of a wolf skull in his hands. “It’s a woman!” Scott cried out, so very far away. “She’s just conscious.”

 

 “They all are. Someone, get Melissa, get Noshiko!” Chris? He wasn’t even sure anymore.

 

 “Oh my God,” Cora gasped, voice almost lost in the din of oncoming nothing, the white noise that filled Stiles’s head. “ _Mom_?”

 

 “Stiles?” He thought he heard Derek ask as he gently, maybe firmly tapped his face, he wasn’t sure. He looked in his direction, locked onto eyes that were almost black in the dark.

 

 “Hang in there, kid,” his dad begged through the encroaching fog, still pressing down on his throat.

 

 Stiles tried to move, tried to say something, do anything to make them realise he was healing, somehow. He was, wasn’t he? He felt so confused. Cold.

 

  _Dad,_ he tried to say, eyes stinging, throat useless. He thought a senseless noise babbled from his torn throat.

 

  _Dad?_

_Derek?_

_I’m so cold._

The mist swallowed him whole.

 

*

 There was a distinct floating sensation to everything, like nothing was tangible, not even his own skin. It all felt numb but not in a worrying way, almost like being drugged except without the loss of awareness or sense of self. Slowly Stiles blinked his eyes open. He was in a bedroom, sparsely furnished with just a bed and a cupboard and lit with a lamp on a bedside table. He twisted his head without really feeling it, blinking at the room in confusion only to see Derek slumped over the edge of his bed, head resting limply on the covers and his hand locked firmly in Stiles’s even in his state of unconsciousness.

 

 He flexed his fingers, brushing them against the hair hanging over Derek’s forehead without moving his captured hand.

 

 “Can you feel it still?”

 Stiles was so relaxed he didn’t even jump as he twisted his head to see Deaton standing at the other side of him. He pinched Stiles’s wrist, apparently checking his pulse and Stiles realised he’d felt him there as he’d awoken, or at least his presence. It was like being in a room and knowing you weren’t alone, but in a comforting way rather than an eerie one, not unlike the awareness he had of the pack’s proximity, though less potent.

 

 “Huh?” he asked, almost unintelligibly.

 

 Deaton gave a polite smile, pressing the earpieces of the stethoscope into his ears before sliding the little metal disc down under Stiles’s collar. He listened for a moment or two before he withdrew. “Your hand? Can you still feel it? I was worried Derek had overdone it,” he said as he tugged the earpieces out of his ears and let the medical instrument hang loosely about his neck. “I’m not a fan of drawing the pain away to the point where you can’t feel anything. It’s exhausting to the wolf taking the sensation and gives the patient a lack of awareness of their own pain.”

 

 Stiles glanced back to Derek again, squeezing the fingers wrapped around his own. “I can feel everything just…sort of numb.

 

 Deaton gave a short nod. “He passed out a little while ago, he should wake soon. He and your father haven’t left your side.”

 

 A frown crinkled Stiles’s brow. “Dad?” he asked croakily. His throat didn’t hurt but his voice still sounded raspy.

 

 Deaton’s lips quirked a little more prominently at one corner and he stepped to the side, revealing the side of the room with the door and the uncomfortable looking chair where his dad was slumped.

 

 “You’ve been asleep for the best part of a day. There’s some water on the bedside table, only take small sips. Noshiko has her hands full at the hospital at the moment but she should be by shortly with some advice about the best foods to restore your strength, a note will be put on your account.” His account with the food supply, Stiles supposed, frowning as he processed it all. He licked his dry lips.

 

 “What about Derek’s sister and uncle? The pack? The other beserkers?”

 

 “All quite well, considering what they’ve been through,” Deaton explained in his usual calm indifference. “They’ve been giving lodgings for now. The Hales have all elected to bundle together. Close proximity is pivotal to mental recovery in packs.”

 

 Stiles blinked. “The Hales?” Because the way he’d said it sounded like…

 

 Memories whispered through his mind. Cora’s voice calling for her mother, the sight of Peter Hale, who Stiles only barely recognised from his appearances in _Beacon Hills_ years ago…

 

 “When Kate died, her hold over them was severed. The abrupt change rendered them unconscious but they’re recovering well. Physically they are as strong as ever, mentally, well...erhaps that will take much longer.” He eyed Stiles thoughtfully. “They have you to thank for their freedom.”

 

 Stiles looked down self-consciously, eyes focussing on the place where his hand was cradled by Derek’s on the bed. “I saw what you did, with your hands in the earth. I know you connected me to every supernatural creature somehow, I know that’s what saved me.”

 

 “Saved you, yes, but it wasn’t me that saved the Hales,” Deaton corrected lightly. “I knew you might have the wolfsbane. I knew that, since we hadn’t had time to weaponize it, the only way to get a guaranteed hit would be for you to get in close, which would get you killed.”

 

 “How did you know that would work?”

 

 “You have a spark of life in you that I’ve never seen before,” he said simply, like that made perfect sense. “I made an educated guess that, given enough of a boost, that spark, that ability to extend life might have been able to save you, the same way a werewolf’s spark can heal them.”

 

 When Stiles didn’t say anything, Deaton, voice as soft and impassive as ever, just gave him a final whimsical smile. “You and Derek came to me looking for answers, looking for a way out but you never needed me to save yourselves. You did that all on your own and even saved everyone else along the way.”

 

 Stiles sighed, tipping his head back against the pillows in something like defeat and exasperation mixed together. “You’re so cryptic.”

 

 Deaton gave a small laugh and opened the door quietly, making Stiles wonder just how exhausted Derek was that someone moving around his vicinity hadn’t woken him. Usually Stiles just had to shift in a nightmare and he jerked awake. He was still now, sleeping almost peacefully, if at an awkward angle. As the door started to close, however, Stiles looked quickly to Deaton.

 

 “Hey, so, does that mean you’re not going to teach me how to use my spark or whatever? Because I did some pretty nifty tricks but, you know, it’d be nice if my abilities, whatever they are, could be of use and _not_ just when things get dire.”

 

 Deaton held his gaze for a long moment, before giving a slow nod. “When you’re recovered, we can talk again.”

 

 The door closed softly and Stiles looked at his dad, looked at Derek, checking stock of the two most important people in his ever-expanding world, before letting his fuzzy, cottony head rest on the pillow again. He closed his eyes and felt the comfort their presence brought hum gently in his veins.

 

*

 

 “I’m heading out, kiddo,” his dad called as he stepped out onto the porch Stiles was ensconced on. It was only two days after Kate’s invasion and Stiles’s body was still feeling the exhaustion of touching death. For all that he protested _he_ hadn’t done anything, that it had been Deaton who had guided the energy toward him, enough for the healing spark in him to charge it up, he did feel like he’d run a marathon on empty. Everything ached.

 

 He wondered how much the last month or so of travelling had contributed to his exhaustion though, as he stared out across the little front lawn and the busy yet calm cul-de-sac of houses the house sat on.

 

 His house, his and his dad’s. Home. That would take some getting used to.

 

 Sensing his restlessness earlier, his dad had dragged the armchair out onto the porch. He’d tucked a blanket round him, parked a side table next to him loaded with two books and two bottles of water. Stiles would’ve protested the fussing, but it felt so good to have his dad flapping round him again like old times, like when Stiles had been ill as a kid, that he only cracked a joke about needing to pee if he drank all that water before his dad got back.

 

 His dad was dressed for work now, all that was missing was the _Beacon Hills_ sheriff’s jacket and he’d be a picture from Stiles’s past, albeit with a few more grey hairs. He hadn’t wanted to leave but Stiles had insisted a few hours would be fine. This place needed him as much as Stiles did.

 

 “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” His dad asked as he pulled the front door to behind him. He hesitated beside Stiles, looking him over as if searching for something else he could do to help somehow.

 

 Stiles pressed a finger into the book to keep his place and then waved his dad off with his free hand. “As much as I’d love to keep you all to myself, this place needs you too. And if this is gonna be my home, you better keep it in tip-top shape.”

 

 His dad didn’t smile though, he stared at him unwaveringly. “If you want me, you’re the most important thing to me, Stiles,” his dad said firmly, “I thought I’d lost you. For years. I don’t ever want to waste another second I could spend with you.”

 

 Stiles canted his head slightly as he looked up at his dad. “Dad, this is… _necessary_. Baby steps, right? You’ll be gone for an hour, two max. It’s a good starting point. We can’t live in our bubble forever. We’ve got to learn how to live here, make this a home together.”

 

 His dad stepped closer, reaching out and grasping his hand squeezing tight. “When did you get so damn smart?” he murmured softly.

 

 “I’ve always been this smart,” Stiles snorted., squeezing back. They both seemed as reluctant as the other to let go.

 

 “I’m so proud of you, kid,” his dad said, slowly releasing him. He let his fingers card through Stiles’s hair before he drew back slowly with a warm smile that crinkled his eyes. “I should’ve known there was nothing that would stop you from finding your way back to me.”

 

 Stiles smiled, even as his eyes prickled and his throat closed up. His felt his head rush as he forced himself up to his feet but didn’t let it stop him as he reached for his dad, holding onto him like a limpet and burying his nose in his shoulder. He still smelled the same. He knew he was home. After all these years, he was finally home. Safe.

 

 “No way was I leaving you alone,” he muttered, voice muffled by his dad’s shoulder. “No way.”

 

His dad felt his knees buckling before Stiles did and urged him back into the chair and under the blanket. It wasn’t particularly cold out, not yet, but sitting still for an hour or two required a blanket nevertheless. The cold weather was coming. Stiles wondered what it might be like to see in a winter inside a real house without drafty windows, curled up with his dad or Derek or both by the fire with real food in his belly.

 

 As if on cue, Stiles felt the little prickle up his spine, the pleasant tickling awareness that signalled Derek was drawing closer. As exhausted as he’d been since he’d awoken, the awareness he felt for other life around him in the settlement had been even more overwhelming. It’d been like a constant noise in his head, like tinnitus set in, like trying to relax and sleep in a crowded room. He couldn’t hear them, it wasn’t like being psychic but he knew he wasn’t alone and that in itself had been both wonderful and difficult at once. It was getting easier though, settling into white noise the longer he spent sitting out on the porch in the quiet. Attempting to acclimatise to it all instead of fretting about not being able to sleep in bed helped.

 

 The pack was always the most prominent presence in the din, like picking out a familiar face in the crowd. They’d all been by in turn over the last few days, although like Derek, they’d had so much change to deal with, both externally and internally. The town had all rallied together to make one of the larger buildings, an abandoned hotel that no one had known what to do with yet, into a hospitable home for the Hales. Stiles hadn’t seen it himself yet, but apparently it was looking good, it didn’t have all the little touches that made it a home yet but it was functional and everyone had a bed and access to water and clothing. The pack were together which was important.

 

 Stiles bit the inside of his mouth as he worried the edges of the blanket rather than the book in his hand once more. He understood why Derek hadn’t really been able to visit, he _completely_ did. Just as Stiles was reunited with his dad, Derek had been reunited with his family, his sisters, his mother, father, his uncle, cousins, some of his family had truly died in the riots but those who had supposedly died in the fire, they, apparently, had been Kate’s beserkers all along. After making enough of them to start swallowing the country in their plague, she’d come to Beacon Hills with the Hale pack in her sights.

 

 They were back now, reunited but they’d lost so much time and Derek was still alpha which, he understood, even as a human, was difficult. Derek had alpha duties as well as those of a son, a brother, a nephew and a cousin in a close-knit family. Stiles understood that, but they’d been together every day for months, they had a bond and it felt odd to not spend most of every day or night together.

 

 After Stiles had woken again the second time after Kate’s attack, Derek had been awake at his bedside with his dad, but once he’d assured himself Stiles was fine, he’d reluctantly torn himself from his side. Stiles didn’t think his dad realised that the last two nights Derek had snuck in through his window though. That had been…interesting. Stiles was not ashamed to say, to Derek at least, that having a hot guy sneak in through his window was an unfulfilled fantasy from his youth that was no less exciting for being a legal adult now in a post-apocalyptic world.

_Derek had been so damn quiet that if Stiles hadn’t known who it was creeping in through his window he may have pissed himself where he lay on the bed. But as Derek closed the window behind him, the moonlight streaming into the otherwise dark room caught his face. He looked so tired and ruffled and so damn beautiful Stiles swore he stopped breathing._

_Stiles licked his lips, just watching. Their eyes locked, even in the dimness with only moonlight to guide them. Then Derek slid onto the bed beside him._

_They lay together without saying a word for a long time, during which even Stiles could hear his dad snoring softly in the other room. It felt clandestine, exhilaratingly secret yet safe too, normal, sneaking a boy into his room. It was comfortingly familiar too, Derek’s warmth against him, his eyes on his._

_After a while, Stiles asked in a whisper, “why didn’t you just knock on the door like a normal person?”_

_“It’s late, didn’t want to wake your dad,” Derek admitted, shifting to get more comfortable._

_“So you just woke_ me _?”_

_Derek’s eyes were almost black in the low light but they glittered like dark diamonds all at once. “I just…I couldn’t relax, couldn’t sleep without you and the day was just so long and I…I just wanted to come back to you.” His words were punctuated by an apologetic wince and Stiles couldn’t quite tell with the lack of light but he swore he was blushing._

_“I can go?” Derek suggested._

_Stiles scowled. “Don’t be a dick. Now get your shoes off my bed and get under the covers.”_

_Without tearing his eyes from Stiles, Derek shed his shoes, jeans and jacket. As he climbed into the bed quietly, Stiles turned on his side to face him more fully, bringing their faces a scant inch or two apart, on the same pillow even, so close, warm, perfect. Stiles studied Derek closely, as Derek did the same to him, broad fingers smoothing over his skin, around to his back to splay against Stiles’s shoulder blades._

_“If I weren’t so drained from not dying I would jump you right now and christen this bed with you,” Stiles whispered sleepily._

_Derek smirked, shifting in even closer to rest his forehead against Stiles’s and just breathe him in. It was the safe space they’d created together at the end of the world, where even an alpha werewolf could be soft, afraid, happy and safe all at once._

_“What’s it like being an alpha to your family?” Stiles asked quietly. He already felt himself relaxing a little more against the unsettling buzz of being surrounded by a town full of people after so long of nothing. Derek was making the world quiet once again, but in a good way this time._

_There was no point in asking, ‘what’s it like seeing your family again after years of believing they burned to death?’ He knew the answer to that. He’d lived it._

_“It’s…weird,” Derek admitted. “I was never meant to be alpha so it’s…weird. My mom, my brain says go to her, let her handle things but my instincts say something different.” Their eyes were closed but Stiles felt the way Derek stroked his back under the t-shirt nervously, felt the way he crowded in close as if to silence his own awareness of everything beyond this room._

_“They’re all struggling,” Derek continued. “It’s hard. They were trapped in those forms for years, it’s something they can’t just spring back from but…but they’re dealing. They’re doing so well and it’s down to me to protect them, to be their alpha and ground them and I don’t know if I can do that, if I’m ready.”_

_“You are,” Stiles promised, sliding his own arm up between them to drag his long fingers across Derek’s beard, his throat, his collarbone, stroking absently, soothingly. “You called them back from darkness. You fought against the things that even monsters are afraid of. You might not feel it but you_ are _an alpha. You can do this. You are doing it.” His lips twitched. “You took care of me pretty good all this time.”_

_“We took care of each other.”_

_The room fell into quiet comfort as they drifted, found solace, strength in the silence. Though Derek snuck out in the morning with a brief kiss to the corner of Stiles’s sleepy mouth, he returned the following night too – still via the window,_ Stiles mused absently.

 

 

 “Your man coming to keep you company while I’m sorting a few things out?” his dad asked, snapping Stiles from his reverie. His tone sounded knowing and Stiles felt instantly caught.

 

 “Ah, I mean, I didn’t ask him to but I can sort of feel him coming this way, so I guess so?” he said truthfully. His dad had lived with supernaturals for long enough that he understood the basic ways of some things. He didn’t entirely understand the way Stiles _felt_ things, the way his spark worked, neither did Stiles really, but he knew what he meant and nodded regardless.

 

 “He probably heard I was returning to duty for a few hours today and knew you’d get up to mischief on your own.”

 

 Stiles smirked. “So untrusting of me.”

 

 “Mmm,” his dad said, just as Derek rounded the corner of the little street and started walking toward them. He ducked his head respectfully at his dad as he ascended the porch steps, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other clasped around a flask.  

 

 “Keep him outta trouble for me, Derek? He’s still got a few days left of bed-rest according to Noshiko,” his dad said, moving passed him with a pat to his shoulder as he headed for the makeshift pasture at the end of the street.

 

 It was where a lot of people in the road kept the horses they used for getting about. Apparently each residential area had their own one, like a garage per every few houses, Stiles supposed. He hadn’t had a chance to check it out yet, or anything else really, but he was really intrigued to see how things functioned, how they’d adapted an existing town to work for the community they’d built.

 

 He was also _really_ interested to see his dad on a horse properly; because that had to be a world away from the awkward man who’d always actively avoided them in Stiles’s youth.

 

 “Oh and Derek?” his dad called as he reached the end of the path to the road. “When you come by tonight, use the door like a normal guy, huh? I don’t want to be up there replacing roof tiles in the winter.” His tone had a teasing air, not unlike the one Stiles used to often and Derek’s eyes widened as his face flamed.

 

 “Sir, yes,” Derek said, clearing his throat awkwardly.

 

 “You watch out for him, Derek,” the sheriff said in answer, before continuing down toward the place the horses of the closest residents were kept. Derek stared after him for a long time, before moving to squeeze into the armchair with Stiles.

 

 “Congratulations, that was his blessing,” Stiles mused, cackling when Derek scowled, snatched the book off him and started reading aloud.

 

 It was his mom’s old, battered copy of _The Hobbit_. She’d read it to him over and over as a kid, so it was unsurprising that out of all the books his dad had kept close and safe, this one had made it on the long journey up here. His dad had actually started reading it aloud to him the night before and he wondered if somehow Derek knew that.

 

 Derek’s voice was low and soft, almost distracted but Stiles didn’t mind. It had become a source of comfort in the last few months, and although he’d never read to him before the domesticity of it, especially in a place where he knew they were safe at last was…freeing. He closed his eyes, curling up into Derek’s side, enjoying the cramped space of the worn armchair and the heat of Derek and the blanket.

 

 He watched the people of the houses opposite tend their vegetable gardens or greenhouses, smaller in scale than the army of glass structures near the front of the settlement. He watched them come back and forth, toward the horses and then back toward the busy centre of the settlement on horseback. It was a peaceful kind of busy, soothing and he let himself acclimatise to the life in every subtle movement, even the way two kids played with their dog in the street a few doors down.

 

 If a few people looked their way, he wasn’t too worried, Derek didn’t seem to be, after all.

 

 “You don’t care that they totally think you’re a snugglewolf now?” he teased quietly when Derek’s voice tapered off between chapters.

 

 Derek snorted. “When you’ve come this far, what people think stops mattering the way it did before the world ended.”

 

 Stiles nodded in understanding. The sun was streaming onto the porch at enough of an angle that it didn’t blind them, yet still bathed them in warm light. “I asked Deaton to teach me how to use my… _spark_ more easily, you know, not just by accident or when someone is going to die. He says he might start me with growing certain crops that struggle in winter, since I have practise in that and go from there. I think he just wants me to grow grain in snowfall or something…” He closed his eyes in a dreamy display. “Man, bread sounds so good. I haven’t had chance to have any yet.”

 

 The corner of Derek’s mouth quirked. “My dad used to make good bread on Saturday mornings. You’ll have to have some, when he gets back into the swing of things.”

 

 Stiles nodded thoughtfully, before sitting up straighter to meet Derek’s eyes. “How are they all doing?” he asked carefully.

 

 Derek set the book on the side table. He reached for the forgotten flask and unscrewed the lid, sipping at the contents before passing it to Stiles. The rich, heavenly smell of chicken noodle soup met Stiles’s tongue and he groaned in spite of seeing the offering as the distraction it was.

 

 “So good.”

 

 There was that boyish smile again, in spite of the heartache in his eyes and Stiles busied himself sipping at the flask so that Derek could forget his question if he wanted. After a moment though, Derek answered.

 

 “It’s just complicated, I guess and none of us know what we’re doing, but we’re making it work.”

 

 “It’ll get easier.”

 

 Derek nodded thoughtfully, looking across the street to where a guy was showing his son how to mount a horse. Like the people here, the Hales would adapt, make good of it, find out how to live again.

 

 Stiles worried the inside of his mouth for a moment, debating on voicing the thought that had plagued him since he woke. In the end he opted for transparency and said, “You know…if you need to be with them, like…more than me for now, I get it, right? I mean they’ve pretty been through so much, I understand if you need to be with each other.”

 

 Derek turned his face toward him, a confused frown furrowing his brow. “I need you to,” he admitted, then a little more sheepishly, “you make me…calmer, make things…”

 

 “Quiet?” Stiles asked with a little smile, because all this time, he hadn’t really thought how his presence at Derek’s side might calm _him_ , soothe him, make _him_ as happy Stiles was when they were together.

 

 “It turns out my mother willed her alpha spark to Laura before she was caught, thinking she was about to die and Laura, she was the last to escape, not by much but enough to make a difference. She willed it to me, that’s actually why she reacted first, because she was more newly turned. Maybe because she was the one to pass the alpha powers to me, there was also a stronger connection there, I’m not sure. But…”

 

 He sighed in frustration. “It’s complicated. But…like with Cora, I never cemented my place as their alpha, after inheriting the spark, so I couldn’t feel them like I can now. There was no pack bond to reach out through, to sense their presence but there was… _something_ when they heard the alpha voice. It was the spark they all recognised, even if Kate’s command over them meant they didn’t recognise me. They couldn’t help but acknowledge the spark of their alpha, even if I wasn’t the alpha they’d bonded to, it…” He winced. “Am I even making any sense?”

 

 “Sure,” Stiles confirmed. “They felt a connection when you roared, even though you didn’t have the alpha bond to them. Like recognising a family member you haven’t seen since you were a kid.”  


 “Something like that.”

 

 At some point, Derek had started dragging his fingers softly along Stiles’s broad knuckles, watching the path of the pads of his fingers across his skin.

 

 “I woke something in them,” Derek continued softly, “something Kate had smothered. The feeling of pack, of family, if not a full bond.”

 

 “Do you have a bond now? Like…a secure alpha connection?” At Derek’s nod, he covered Derek’s hand with his own free one. “Must be weird, being your own mom’s alpha?”

 

 “It’ll take some getting used to,” Derek agreed. “I thought about willing it back to her, but she…she’s got enough to deal with, they all have, trying to recover from being trapped like that for so long.” A look of determination crossed his face. “I need to do this. I need to be their alpha.”

 

 Stiles shoulder-checked him and offered him a sip of the soup. “You’re doing a pretty good job so far, if you can keep me out of trouble,” Stiles said gently.

 

 “I…I want to be yours too, if that’s…what you still want?” Derek hedged.

 

 “Well,” Stiles began, pretending to consider it, “we’re a team, so does that make me like…co-alpha or something?”

 

 Derek’s answering smile was brighter than the mid-morning sun.

 

*

 

 A week of _almost_ bed rest saw Stiles recovered enough and restless enough to venture out into the largest gathering of people he’d been surrounded by since the world ended. His dad seemed eager to introduce him to this safe haven he’d helped build, to give him the grand tour, but the further they moved along the peaceful street, the more anxious he felt. No one stopped and stared in the middle of the road but he could feel their curious glances linger as they bid them a good morning.

 

 Stiles smiled nervously, every muscle in his body tense.

 

 “Why is this so hard?” He whispered, as they rounded the corner of the little street, where the road, such as it was became surrounded by a stretch of fields. They were full of flourishing crops that Stiles couldn’t recognise at first glance and in the distance, the morning sun was gleaming off the greenhouses. He could _just_ glimpse the way they curved around the edge of the ‘town centre’ and out of sight. It gave the little residential area their house sat in a secluded feel, which was a blessing in the momentous task he had ahead of him, of learning how to live with people again.

 

 Scott and a very pregnant Lydia had visited him over the last few days and it had been bizarre enough remembering how to talk to people who’d known him. _Bizarre_ , his mind supplied, _but so fucking good_. Scott had looked just the same. Same brightness to his eyes, same crooked jaw, albeit covered with scruff and same catastrophic hair. He’d wrapped Stiles in his arms as if they’d never been apart and Lydia, as beautiful as ever, even with swollen feet and cheeks ruddy from hot flushes, she’d given him the same air of indifference that had cracked with an almost teary smile the more they spoke.

 

 The rest of the people here, they were good people, strangers for now, but they’d built a sanctuary that didn’t discriminate against race or species or anything else. They were good, hard working people and they loved his dad. He could do this.

 

 “You’re too hard on yourself,” his dad said, nudging his shoulder with his gently as they walked. “You’re expecting to swoop in here and drive everyone crazy with your eclectic facts and sarcastic humour, just like you did at the station, but you’re not that kid anymore, Stiles, and that’s okay.”

 

 Stiles felt his eyes sting a little at the way those words exposed him and every uncertainty. His dad saw right through him. “I didn’t want it to change me,” he whispered, the breeze cutting across the fields whipping his hair up and nearly carrying his words away from them too ferociously to hear. His dad had heard him though. Of course he had.

 

 The Sheriff stopped in the middle of the path and turned to face him, gripping his shoulder firmly. It was just like when he’d been a child and his dad had held him firmly, as if to anchor Stiles, to be sure he was listening.

 

 “You survived where most of the world didn’t, Stiles, it’d be insane for you _not_ to change. It’s _okay_ that you did.”

 

 Stiles stared into his dad’s eyes and felt his throat clench tight as he forced out the words that had been eating him up for a week now. “I killed someone.” He swallowed thickly. “I killed Gerard Argent and I don’t even care. God, Dad, I’m _glad_ he’s dead. I wish he’d died sooner. I wish we’d let him die back in the woods rather than hauled him all the way here. I killed someone and I’m not sorry. What type of person does that make me?”

 

 His dad’s fingers squeezed more firmly and his dad’s face softened as they moved to cup his face as if he were the most beautiful sight in the world, scars and all. “It makes you human,” his dad said softly. The wind died down enough for the moment to feel like an intimate bubble on the breeze, the sun streaming down and highlighting every line on his dad’s face.

 

 “I killed people in my line of work, Stiles. Some of them people who had done things that made me sick to my stomach,” his dad continued. “Whether it’s wrong or right, I made sure they could never hurt another person the way they did again and I was satisfied with that. I like to think the way I came to that judgement, the way it was made doesn’t make me a bad person for making it. But even then, the world isn’t what it was when you were a kid. So you have to ask yourself, did you make this place safer by killing him? Did you keep the people you love safe? Innocent people?”

 

 When Stiles didn’t answer, his dad continued. “I would’ve made the same decision, so would Chris, so would everyone here. We’re not animals. Like Derek said, we hold trials, ideally, but before we created order here there was a lot of bloodshed to take the town back.” His dad rubbed his hand across the back of his own neck, “what I’m trying to say is, you’re not a monster, you’re not a bad man. You’re still my Stiles you’ve just…you’ve grown up. You’re a man who wants to protect the people around him at all costs and that is a man I’m proud of. A man you should be proud of too.”

 

 Stiles’s eyes still burned but his lips worked into an emotional smile as he gave a jerky nod, unable to say anything more.

 

 A clattering sound combined with that of hooves on the track made them turn. Stiles knew a moment of surprise at the sight of a horse and cart pulling up alongside them. It was still a startling sight, one that would takee about as much getting used to as people in general, he supposed.

 

 “Can I give you a ride anywhere?” the woman on the cart asked.

 

 “To the town centre,” Stiles’s dad replied, beaming warmly at her.

 

 It still bewildered Stiles a little to call it a town, because it didn’t even have a thousand people. He supposed it was busy enough, successful, _lively_ enough to earn the title though.

 

 “I’m just showing my boy round the place.” His dad gripped the edge of the cart and hauled himself up to sit beside Cara, who had shimmied along the front to make space. “Stiles this is Cara, one of our neighbours, Cara this is Stiles.”

 

 “The one with the two noisy kids,” Cara mused as Stiles took his dad’s hand and pulled him up to sit next to his dad. The woman flicked the reins and the horse began a sedate trot up the quiet road.

 

  _So bizarre,_ Stiles thought, and yet it carried its own kind of peace. The cart swayed gently with the movement and he watched the fields pass by, let his gaze catch on the greenhouses, the people busy within. His fingers curled in his lap, itching to take a look, to get involved. He’d never really considered himself green-fingered before all this but he’d been without earth, fruit and vegetables to nurture since he’d left the tower and part of him yearned for them. He’d been good at it, whether that was aided by his spark or not and he missed it.

 

 “You can’t wait to muck in and get your hands dirty, huh?” Cara asked.

 

 Stiles flushed a little, his thoughts obviously clear on his face and he struggled for a moment to remember how to make his words work. He felt off balance, under pressure as the silence stretched out between them. Then Cara tilted her head with a gentle, understanding little smile.

 

 “It gets easier,” she promised softly, before looking back to the path ahead. “Everyone here, we’ve all seen things, even the kids. But you’ll get there, don’t worry.”

 

 Stiles nodded, licking his lips nervously before managing, “I was sorta good at it, before, I mean. When I was alone. I miss it.” When all else failed, honesty had always been his method of madness in the past.

 

 “They’ll be grateful for a new hands, new insight.”

 

 “Deaton’s going to teach me to do some things, maybe something I can help with the crops,” he said, words coming quicker the more he spoke. “I made Derek haul some of the books I used up here too; some for crops, some for other things. They might be of use.”

 

 Cara beamed. “Well we have a library of sorts, then everyone might make use of them. And of course there might be some things there you’d like to take a look at. Actual books, novels I mean, not just instruction manuals.”

 

 Stiles’s heart jumped. He’d managed to salvage some books, but the idea of something he hadn’t read in a while, or something entirely new was…

 

 “You’ll fit in well here,” she promised brightly. “Wait ‘til you see the place properly. It’s like a paradise.”

 

 “One where we all work our asses off,” his dad interjected.

 

 Cara laughed. “Well, there is that, but we’re safe, we’re all happy. We’re together. There’s not much more you can ask for.”

 

 Stiles thought of the time he’d spent alone, just _surviving_ , thought his dad and Derek, the pack and his chest ached.

 

 “Yeah. Yeah I think so.” His face crinkled then. “I’m not sure I can still ride a horse though. I haven’t been on one since my mom was alive.”

 

 His dad laughed softly this time. “We’ll get you on one. If I can do it you can.”

 

 To his dad, it all seemed so easy, nothing impossible. Stiles hoped he’d regain that optimism in time, now he knew he wasn’t alone.

 

 Cara dropped them on the edge of the busy, repurposed town square. It was just off the road toward the gates and the other that lead toward the hospital and the clinic. People were moving around, busy with their tasks but they stopped to offer their greetings. The casual friendliness of it, the everyday order to their routine calmed his frayed senses, made his nervousness abate somewhat. There was a sense of normalcy in their absent, kind smiles that made him feel a little less isolated in the sea of startlingly new faces.

 

 There was a series of buildings that stored the fruits, vegetables, meat, grain, even a bakery. They seemed to work similarly to shops except that there was no currency, only an allowance to be spent per household. His dad gave him a knowing smile at his open awe at the selection and took a fresh loaf and some eggs on his, _their_ account. He showed him how it worked simultaneously, so he could come and pick what he wanted, within reason, another time.

 

 The smell of bread whisked up his nostrils as his dad showed him the building for the tailors, run by an older couple and the three youngsters they seemed to be apprenticing. There was a stock of used clothing in good repair, as well as basic fabric for that which couldn’t be repurposed. There were even shelves of wool for those who could knit or crochet their own sweatshirts. He was glad when his dad suggested they come back another time to place an order for a warmer sweater, because while the idea in itself was more than appealing, standing and being measured in close proximity to people for any length of time, having to stand _still_ seemed impossible just then.

 

 There were buildings for tools and building supplies, gardening supplies. Someone had even repurposed a projector to form a makeshift cinema that ran most evenings. The school was in a building attached to the library, which not only had been well-stocked before his dad and the others had even arrived, but had been added to with every visit to local areas over the years.

 

 The building was simple inside. Nothing like the architectural _New York Public Library_ his parents had taken him to once, but clean, bright and lined with lovingly cared for books. It smelled like real pages and something in the way the old man in charge chatted to Stiles eagerly about the books he could donate to share with the library just lifted him.

 

 The librarian, Frank, was a war veteran and one of the people who’d lived in the settlement before the world’s end. He told Stiles eagerly about the archived matter on the library computers, a world of knowledge, of stories saved from the void of oblivion. He seemed to love books even more than Stiles.

 

 Stiles glanced up from one of the computers that Frank was using to show him the digital archives, to find his dad watching him with a fond smile. Catching his eye, Stiles reciprocated, before looking back to the screen, where Frank was showing him the way they’d managed to rescue a lot of the books from the cloud system a lot of libraries shared before the internet went down.

 

 “I wonder if we could find and repurpose some e-readers or tablets so more people would be able to download these?” Stiles wondered aloud.

 

 Frank beamed. “We have a few, we keep them inside the library but people can download a book or two and go away and sit down to free up the computers. People are pretty good about being careful of technology. Parts are hard to come by and things don’t last forever.”

 

 Stiles nodded. “I’ll bring by the books we talked about. I’d be glad to share them, you know, I think everything you have here will keep me busy for a _while_.”

 

 “Do you want to take something to check out for tonight?” Frank asked brightly as they made their way back to the main desk, Stiles’s dad allowing them their conversation and just watching quietly as he followed, no doubt pleased with Stiles’s easier flowing conversation.

 

 Before Stiles could answer, however, Stiles felt the steady presence beneath his skin flutter like a netted butterfly. He turned his head to see Derek walking into the library with a woman at his side. Derek’s warm gaze fixed on him as they approached the desk.

 

 “Hey,” he greeted softly.

 

 “Hey.” Stiles eyes locked on his. It felt so normal, running into Derek like this, as if this were a normal town. It was only then that he realised, it **was** a normal town, as normal as it could be and he was so struck by that realisation that it took him a moment to register that the dark-haired woman with him was Laura. She looked different with her hair clean and brushed, sweeping over one shoulder. She was dark-haired like Derek, with brown eyes instead of Derek’s complex green-hazel-grey. She was every bit a Hale and Stiles was mesmerised by the resemblance, roght down to the tentative smile that touched her lips when he looked at her.

 

 “Stiles,” Derek said, voice jarring slightly. “This is my big sister Laura, Laura this is my...this is Stiles.” Derek’s cheeks flushed and Stiles’s dad cleared his throat awkwardly on his behalf, so Stiles reached for Laura’s hand, shaking firmly.

 

 “Nice to meet you properly,” Stiles said, confidence spurred on somehow by Derek’s fumble.

 

 “Derek and I are just here to get some books for the family,” Laura said brightly. Her voice held the same outgoing, if tentatively guarded note his did, Stiles thought. He realised that they were in a pretty similar situation, learning to live again, trying to heal and find a balance between their old selves and what they could be now.

 

 Laura seemed like a vivacious, confident, bubbly person, seemed like she could be again. Maybe they both could. He felt more confident in that possibility than he had mere days ago.

 

 “Everyone at the house is pretty much working full-steam ahead to try and get the hotel into shape. But everyone needs something to do in the evenings when it gets too dark to work,” Laura said, gesturing to the pile of books they were evidently returning to trade for some new titles. Stiles supposed all those Hales must go through a few books. And reading, at least to him, was a good escape from his busy thoughts. The Hales must all be feeling the same.

 

 “I heartily recommend _Call of the Wild_ ,” Stiles said, before he could stop himself. “Or, you know, _White Fang_? Something to soothe the restless wolf.” He wanted to claw back the words as soon as they’d tumbled over his lips but to his relief Laura burst into laughter. It was a beautiful sound, almost as beautiful as Derek’s private smile, which he tried to hide by looking back to Frank to check the books back in.

 

 “I can see why Derek likes you so much,” Laura said brightly and Stiles’s face flamed, just as his dad cleared his throat awkwardly, shifting his feet as if not quite sure what to do with himself.

 

 Derek scowled at her, but before anyone could say anything, she swept toward Stiles and held out her hand, palm up facing Stiles, like she was silently telling him to halt. Except he wasn’t moving, and she looked curious rather than commanding.

 

 “Would you mind if I?”

 

 Stiles gnawed on the inside of his mouth, eyes flicking to Derek, who watched, frozen, as if he didn’t dare believe his eyes. Not as if it were something that was bad though. Stiles nodded, his recklessness subdued by his trust of her, of Derek. His eyes widened as she stepped into his personal space though and her slender hand came around to cup the side of his throat. She had a look of concentration on her face, eyes fixed on the angle of his jaw and her long fingers flexed, almost petting but not quite.

 

 A glance to the side showed him a stunned but not unhappy look on Derek’s face, as if he were seeing something he hadn’t dared to hope for. When Stiles saw Laura’s nostrils flare a little, he realised he was being scented, accepted and his stomach flipped. Then Laura’s fingers tightened just a fraction and she tugged him forward, enough that their cheeks brushed before she stepped back.

 

 Her smile reminded him so much of Derek, so disarming, and he absently reached up to touch his neck where her hand had been as she watched him. Frank hadn’t looked up from his books and his dad seemed unaffected. This was obviously something that wolves did this often with each other, with their pack, human, wolf or whatever. It was commonplace, but not for Stiles, who hadn’t really belonged to someone besides his dad or Derek.

 

 It was a feeling like coming home after an arduous day that had lasted years, except it wasn’t a place, it was a people. It was within him and the people around him and it made him relax more than he had since they’d stepped into the settlement.

 

 He was home.

 

 “Don’t be a stranger, Stiles,” Laura said warmly, glancing to her brother before making her way toward the bookshelves labelled as ‘Fiction: A-I’ by the simple black and white sign jutting from the end of the row.

 

 Derek had only had eyes for Stiles the entire exchange, his expression intense somehow. In a good way though, a way that made Stiles’s stomach squirm and his breath hitch a little as Derek stepped closer

 

. “Laura is…ah…” Derek searched his face, as if looking for something, searching deeper than flesh, as always. Then he drew in pensive breath before continuing. “She’s getting some more books for the family. But would you…?”

 

 It was so awkward with Frank pretending not to listen, with his dad standing there not knowing whether to walk away or say something or what. Stiles and Derek had been just them for so long that even their time with Cora, Erica, Isaac and Boyd hadn’t prepared them for having to be a couple surrounded by other people. It would be a learning curve.

 

 He felt like a love-struck teenager againand just that thought made his skin tingle under Derek’s gaze.

 

 “Would you and your dad like to come meet my family?” Derek asked at last. Stiles knew his dad had been stopping by briefly, helping to arrange things where he could among his other duties, in the stolen hour or two that he allowed himself to part from Stiles’s side. What Derek meant was an official meeting, an introduction between their two separate families as one pack.

 

 “I…sure, totally sure. Yes,” Stiles said lamely, feeling a little daze and as if Laura’s presence was a tad more recognisable since she’d scented him. It was as easily identifiable from the others in the settlement as Isaac, Boyd, Erica or Cora’s. Pack, he realised.

 

 Derek made a face. “I… They’ll want to scent you both,” he said cautiously, though Stiles knew now what he’d seen when Derek had watched Laura approach him. He was cautiously pleased, wanting Stiles officially accepted by the rest of his pack, his dad too. The solidarity brought with it a sense of confirmation, of reality. Of intimacy.

 

 Stiles’s cheeks still burned but he willed his lips to move. “Good,” he managed. “That’s…a pack thing right? To make us pack?”

 

 “You’re already pack,” Derek said, in a tone that suggested he was so much more than that, that he was everything. “It’s instinctual, tradition, just…making it official.”

 

 Stiles couldn’t help himself. “Like _Facebook Official_?”

 

 “Stiles,” his dad complained from beside him, his own race ruddy with embarrassment while Derek looked mortified. “We’ll wait for Laura to find her books and come with you to meet them.”

 

 The hotel wasn’t far from the centre, just off it in fact, likely due to its original use, close to all the amenities. It looked like a grand log-style cabin. Likely it had been the appeal of that very vision to attract more niche tourists back at the start, to the self-sufficient village not too far from the mountains or protected forest. A quiet retreat to from the busy lives of the people who had come before.

 

 It was part dark honeyed wood and part stone, with a broad entrance and frontage that was mostly glass. ‘ _Orelia Lake Lodge’_ was written proudly above the entrance and Stiles could almost envision the subtle luxury and welcoming warmth it had held before, the kind it would have again, no doubt as the pack house.

 

 Even as they approached, Stiles could see Derek’s family and a few of the other settlers up on the roof making repairs, cleaning the windows, working outside to repair what Stiles thought looked like a wooden bed frame. He couldn’t help but appreciate the aesthetics of the pack and their new home.

 

 “May I just take a moment to say that you come from a spectacularly unfair gene-pool?” Stiles mused, much to his father’s despair and Laura’s amusement. Derek just sighed in familiar fond exasperation, before Stiles continued, “The place doesn’t look in that bad a shape?”

 

 “It’s attached on the side to the restaurant that we use more as a sort of, communal canteen for those that labour or can’t cook well in the community, so the hotel has been kept in good repair, structurally at least,” Stiles’s dad explained as they approached. “We used it for emergency accommodation at the start too. So it’s just repairs to the inside really, to the bedrooms that the pack are going to use. Make it more of a home than a dormitory or hotel.”

 

 “We’re not far off. The building and interiors were built well to start and the windows are already double-glazed, it’s just a few repairs to the roof and the bedrooms really now,” Laura elbowed Stiles, “maybe you can work your magic to help us kick-start our production in the garden?”

 

 “Not until he’s repaired the sorry excuse for a vegetable patch I have,” Stiles’s dad interjected and before Stiles could say a word to any of this, he saw a familiar face drop down off the roof and make a beeline for him.

 

 Erica’s blond locks were tied back off her face, which as smudged with dirt but smile radiant. As he watched her approach, he saw Cora and Isaac circling around from the back and Boyd close behind them. Erica reached them first and without any hesitation she wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug and pressed her forehead against his neck. A low, wolf growl of contentment, of greeting rumbled in her throat.

 

 When she drew back, it was with long, sweeping, _purposeful_ stretches of her fingers and she stepped just to the side of his vision so that Cora could fill her space, then Isaac, then Boyd, until all of them had marked him with their scent, greeted him, accepted him into this extended pack they had built since the last time they were all together at the same time. Confirming his place, no matter how their pack had grown.

 

 When Boyd’s large hand drew back from his neck and he moved aside, a stranger took his place. Peter Hale, like Laura, offered a moment of hesitation, not for his uncertainty but for Stiles’s benefit and respect of his alpha, no doubt, who watched the entire thing from Stiles’s side with a look of silent approval. Like Laura had, he cupped Stiles’s neck and leaned in just enough to scent, to greet, brushing against him in a bizarrely platonic and natural yet intimate way that set precedent for the rest of the Hale family that followed.

 

 Two of the beserkers had not been wolves but the rest had been Hale stock and Stiles was almost overwhelmed at the sea of faces so close and so soon. His chest tightened at the strangeness of it, but the pulse of the pack bond growing more steadily in his soul swept over him like a soothing balm and when the man Stiles swore was Derek’s father, from the striking resemblance stepped aside, he realised two things. Firstly that his father was being greeted, welcomed into the pack in the same way and secondly, that Talia Hale, the previous pack alpha was standing in front of him.

 

 Derek gave a private, warm smile, stepping closer to Stiles to splay his hand at the small of his back, a grounding, comforting gesture as his mother spanned the gap between them. Her fingers were long but strong, like Laura’s. They cupped the side of Stiles’s neck as her dark brown eyes assessed him and her lips twisted up the same way that Derek’s did. She greeted Stiles’s father in the same way, before coming back to rest her hand on Derek’s shoulder, eyes returning to Stiles. “We owe everything to you and Derek,” she said in a warm, honeyed voice.

 

 Stiles ducked his head awkwardly, dragging his fingers across the back of his neck. “If it weren’t for Derek, I wouldn’t even be here.” He’d still be alone in his tower, lamenting the life he’d lost until he just faded away out of loneliness.

 

 Talia tilted her head knowingly as Derek’s fingers curled gently on his back. “You brought each other here,” she said, “and you saved us all.” Talia looked to his dad then. “And your father and everyone here have done everything they can to help us build a home here, when we’d lost everything. We’re so proud to be a part of your pack.”

 

 His pack, _their pack_ , the one he and Derek had built in the middle of _Salvada forest_ at the end of the world. He nodded, stunned for words by the emotion swelling in his throat, by the connection he felt with everyone standing around him.

 

 “Do you want to come inside and see the pack house?” Derek asked softly, the first time he had spoken since they pack had officially greeted him. Stiles just nodded, and wrapped his fingers around Derek’s as he was lead inside, suddenly a lot less nervous about the things to come over the next few weeks as he learned to live as part of a community again. After being essentially _nuzzled_ and _sniffed_ by Derek’s family, their pack, he supposed there wasn’t much to be nervous about.


	12. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

 

 

_SIX MONTHS LATER…_

 

 It was the first day that had truly felt like spring so far. It was cooler, wetter up in the settlement than it had been in _Beacon Hills_ , but Stiles had found the winter surprisingly mild, even enjoyable. There was something about coming in from the cold winter air and curling up by the fire with his dad, or curling his cold toes under the backs of Derek’s knees in bed when the world outside went quiet. It was something that felt a lot like home.

 

 A sigh tumbled over his lips as he sat back on his heels in the dirt, the afternoon sun kissing his sweat-dappled brow that he wiped with his forearm. Behind him, the fields he had helped sew as soon as the last snow had melted were already tall with wheat that should have taken much longer to mature. He didn’t know much about wheat but the people around him who had worked the agriculture, cared for the earth and the greenhouses long before he’d stepped foot here had sung praises for his ‘miracle’ spark.

 

 His spark was still a work in progress, at least as far as his control was concerned, but the people he worked with in the greenhouses and on the fields assured him how much more the crops had flourished with his increasing skill. Stiles protested the use of any ‘skill’. Luck was still a better alternative to people who didn’t understand the concept of a ‘spark’, though it was becoming more reliable. He thought one day he might even be able to harness his spark in other ways.

 

 Deaton was a cryptic asshole and kept insisting it wasn’t a fine art, the control of a spark like his, though the way he kept tricking Stiles into helping him on the days he brewed his medicines with Noshiko made him think maybe the endgame was to get Stiles to take over for those. _That_ was a daunting yet exciting prospect for the far distant future. For now, Stiles was glad to be of use and happy to work hard, especially on days like today, when his dad was on shift and Derek was out on an a scouting mission.

 

 Just because the bone men were gone, didn’t mean they had grown complacent.

 

 Stiles wiped his hands on his jeans and made his way toward the road, such as it was, with the two women he’d worked the fields with that day. Tonight would be the second night Derek was gone and while Stiles could still feel him out there, still sensed his wellbeing; it didn’t stop him missing him, as rare as his excursions were nowadays, aside from the occasional hunting.

 

 Where once it’d been hard to remember warmth and companionship, now it was hard to remember a night where Derek hadn’t been curled up bedside him in the home he shared with his dad, where there was no dinner at the pack house. The nights without Derek quietly enjoying his family’s antics around him with that reserved contentment of his were like a bad dream from long ago.

 

 It was just that he missed him, that his world was just generally better with Derek there, that his life had a completeness to it. It wasn’t necessity. He thought that was why Derek volunteered for the scouting parties, because he knew Derek hated leaving the pack as much as Stiles hated him going. It was to reassure Stiles that he had a place heare that was of his own making, not theirs. After six months of living and working and getting to know the people of the settlement though, Stiles thought he got that pretty well now. He’d have to assure Derek of that and that he preferred the place _they_ had, together, very much.

 

 “Do you want a lift home, Stiles?” Luyu, the woman in charge of the field crops offered as she dusted off her own hands to tie back her glossy black hair.

 

 “That’d be good, yeah. I’m sore all over.”

 

 Luyu grinned. “Still not let your dad set you up with a horse?”

 

 “Dad let me up on Mischief a few times but I haven’t gotten my own ‘wheels’ yet, no. I’m on the wait list for one.”

 

 Luyu nodded, leading the way over to where her pinto stood grazing loyally.

 

 His dad was absent when he dropped down off the back of Luyu’s horse and headed into the house, but given all the excitement in the last few weeks, that was understandable. A few weeks ago, they’d had radio contact from the outside world for the first time since communications had gone down years ago, before they’d left _Beacon Hills_. Just as they had always daydreamed, there were other places like theirs out there, other safe havens in the wilderness, like sprouts of life in the wasteland.

 

 Stiles thought of his own lonely life less than a year ago, in his radio tower, calling out each day, trying in vain to make contact with the outside world. It was a lonely yet distant thought, so far removed from the last six months or so of life since here where everything was so alive.

 

 The contact brought news that there were at least two others out there, the settlement in question and one other they’d managed to contact before them at _Orelia Lake_. The one who’d made the call was up beyond the mountains, inaccessible until spring was truly in swing, but then the plan was that a few of their team would make the journey to _Orelia Lake_. Apparently they too had integrated with the supernatural in their attempts to survive and while they weren’t as comfortable or self-sufficient as _Orelia Lake_ , how they worked wasn’t dissimilar.

 

 The idea of collaboration, of branching out was both terrifying and exhilarating, full of hope.

 

 The world had been far from perfect before, but Stiles didn’t believe the theory, popular with a few of the settlers, that the world had been wiped clean for its sin. However he did believe that out of the darkness of loss, they could start out in a more accepting place. If the whole world could be rebuilt with the mindset and ideals of the people here in _Orelia_ _Lake_ , varied yet honest, caring and considerate, open-minded, he thought that wouldn’t be so bad.

 

 He tossed his work-soiled clothes into the hamper in the bathroom and stepped into the shower to wash away the soil and sweat. When he thought of the past now it was with a distant sadness, a longing for certain things, his little creature comforts and simple pleasures. Junk food and _Netflix_ and _Xbox_ , his old Jeep, but that nostalgia wasn’t all consuming.

 

 The kind of world they had now, it was changing every day it seemed. Their ability to make things work, to make things easier on the people they worked and lived with was improving all the time, simply with organisation or by collaborating with supernatural strength and abilities. They’d created a different kind of happiness that was no less fulfilling. In fact, Stiles might even say he was happier now, here with his dad and the pack and these people than he had been since his dreamlike childhood.

 

 He was still smiling as he stepped out of his quick shower and made for his bedroom with a towel around his waist. He smiled at the thought of pack dinners at the Hale house with his dad and Derek, of movie nights at the old school and cooking lessons with Mr Hale. He thought of the first official day of spring. Stiles had dived into the lake just outside the walls of the settlement and dragged Derek under with him, laughing and spluttering in equal measures as their extended families set up the annual communal picnic.

 

 He and his dad had added a few more personal touches to his bedroom since he’d arrived. The bed was covered in warm quilts. The shelves were lined with some of the more personal books he’d brought with him from _Salvada_ but hadn’t donated to the library, along with little trinkets, a photo of him and his parents his dad had saved. It was one of the few, with the others scattered around the house that they’d made a home together.

 

 There was also an old dresser and wardrobe with his own clothes and even some of Derek’s hanging alongside them. It was simple but cosy, enough room for a bed that fitted him and Derek comfortably.

 

 Derek, who was sitting on the in-built window seat when Stiles stepped in.

 

 He’d felt Derek’s presence swell with his approach while he was in the shower, but it wasn’t an exact art, at least not one he’d honed or experimented with. Not when they languished happily in close proximity most of the time. It was a gift from his spark but also a pack thing, Stiles had learned, and werewolf or not, as a kid who’d had to deal with loneliness even before the world ended, with a dad who had to work so hard to raise and provide for him, it was an arrangement he longed for. He thrived on it.

 

 “Hey,” Derek said, voice warm and husky as he turned his head to look at him. The last of the afternoon sun was streaming in through the window and bathed his face in glorious golden light, a picture that took Stiles’s breath away.

 

 “Hey,” Stiles managed, voice a little raspy, still in awe at the sight of him. Nearly two days had been too many, even knowing, in his gut, in the spark of their connection between them that he was alright. They were both alright, they were both strong and capable, but they worked better together, felt better together.

 

 Stiles stepped forward without even thinking about it, drawn to Derek as ever. He felt warmth spread through him, relaxation and bliss like sunlight on his skin as he came to stand beside the window seat. Derek’s fingers skittered across his hip, then around to splay at the small of his back and draw him closer.

 

 Derek nosed into his belly, into the light trail of hair there and Stiles drew in a little breath, fingers sliding into Derek’s hair.

 

 “Missed me?” he mused and Derek grumbled an answer into the edge of the towel, just breathing Stiles in, just leaning into him. Sometimes werewolf instincts and werewolf greetings got to Stiles more than human ones, if only because it meant Derek utterly trusted him to be himself and know Stiles accepted that, loved it, even. Stiles relished in the silent scenting, the brush of Derek’s beard against his stomach until Derek’s mouth dragged up, accessible enough for Stiles to grasp his face and pull him up so their lips could meet.

 

 Their lips pressed ardently together in a mixture of relief and hunger to reaffirm their connection. They parted without really losing contact, foreheads pressed together, Stiles’s nose nuzzling into Derek’s stubbly cheek as his long fingers cupped Derek’s neck. The simple contact meant so much more because of what Derek was, made their skin sing as if touched by a livewire.

 

 “Wanna go with you next time,” Stiles breathed into the diminutive space between their mouths, tasting the little exhale of relief and intimacy that spilled over Derek’s lips. “Wherever you go, we’re supposed to be a team.”

 “We are,” Derek murmured softly, fingertips digging into Stiles’s shoulders with the urgency in which he held him close. “I wanted to ask you, I just…” He trailed off, letting his lips drag across the curve of Stiles’s chin. His nose pressed to inhale at the corner of Stiles’s jaw, just by his ear. His warm inhalation there sent a shiver through Stiles, who tipped his head sideways to welcome more of the touch, at the same time as Derek tugged him in to straddle his thighs. The towel fell away and the scrape of denim on the back of Stiles’s damp thighs dragged in the best way.

 

 He knew what Derek meant. They were still working out the fine balance of solitude and working with the people around them. They had a community, a pack and Stiles’s dad and they were both guilty of not wanting to demand too much from the other while they relearned their place in all of that, while they made up for lost time with their families. They were getting better though. It was getting there.

 

 “Ask me,” Stiles whispered as his eyes fell shut, letting his hands cup Derek’s face and throat more fervently as blunt human teeth started to mouth at his ear. He couldn’t explain the need to be in this together, to work together, to be close but he knew he didn’t have to, because they were wolf instincts too, for the pack, the alpha pair to remain together. He knew that’s what Derek thought, what he wanted even if he never said it out loud.

 

 They were bonded in a way more than two humans could’ve ever been, more complete. Stiles was on fire with wanting every part of him, even months later. It was a fire that only fuelled the happiness burning comfortingly in the hearth of his soul.

 

 Derek’s hands gripped his hips, then his ass, squeezed and tugged him in close until their torsos were pressed tight together, Stiles’s groin against his as he straddled his lap. A low, humming growl rumbled in Derek’s throat, a sound of abject, dizzied pleasure, all-consuming, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, any troubles or uncertainties fading away in its heat. The tight soreness in Stiles’s muscles from working in the fields, the slight ache in his hands ebbed away at Derek’s touch until he melted into his lap.

 

 “You smell so good,” Derek mumbled absently, softly into the soft skin behind his ear. “Just here. Like me and clean and Stiles and pack and home…”

 

 “Yeah?” Stiles asked breathily, because usually it was him rambling nonsensical platitudes and endearments and Derek was always sub-vocal in his appreciation.

 

 “Hmm.” One of Derek’s hands splayed up across the small of his back, urging him into a soft rocking motion. Stiles hissed at the scrape of denim against his growing hardness and Derek groaned in reluctance, rutting up into him once, twice more before slowly pushing him off.

 

 Stiles reached for Derek’s shirt at the same time as Derek reached for his belt, the two of them fumbling with fast, urgent, clumsy fingers until Derek’s clothes shuddered to the floor in a messy heap around his feet. Their mouths met fiercely again, tongues clashing together as Stiles stepped backward, urging Derek with him with a grip in his hair, unwilling to relinquish the connection of their mouths.

 

 Stiles nearly tripped over a large cardboard box on the floor by his bed and he flailed. Derek caught him, just, and both of them tumbled onto the bed in a heap of tangled limbs and soft laughter. Laughter smothered by slower, lazier kisses, the two of them arching languid together on the sheets, still mussed from where Stiles had crawled out of them that morning. It smelled of them still, both of them, it was soft and welcoming and their hands moved over each other, reaffirming, appreciative.

 

 “What’s with the box?” Stiles asked between kisses, pushing himself forward now so he was half lying over Derek, rutting his swelling hardness softly into the jut of his thigh.

 

 Derek arched up to compliment his movements, caressing him everywhere, his own erection pushing into the warm hollow of Stiles’s hip. “Present,” he answered breathily, nuzzling insistently at the corner of Stiles’s mouth to try and get him to tilt his head and offer his throat again. Derek liked to switch between worrying his neck, marking and scenting, then coming back to his mouth, spreading beard-burn and affection between the two until Stiles felt giddy with lack of air.

 

 Stiles dragged the corner of his own mouth over Derek’s jaw, scenting back. The action made Derek grind up into him a little more insistently.

 

 “Present for me?” Stiles panted.

 

 “Hmm, if you’re good,” Derek hummed and Stiles let out a low huff of laughter against his mouth, pulling himself up fully over Derek’s hips. A low, rumbling growl rented the air as he found himself rolled straight over onto his back, Derek over him, startling a little laugh out of him that was stolen by hungry kisses. They turned feral and claiming as they trailed down his body, teeth scraping around the subtle toned shape of pectoral muscle and lower to _just_ catch on the edge of his navel.

 

 Stiles drew in a sharp breath and let his legs fall open to make more room for Derek between them. Derek wrapped his arms around his thighs as he settled on his belly between them. He nosed lazily at the juncture of Stiles’s hip, slow, languid drags of his nose like little teasing caresses so close yet so far from where Stiles really wanted them. He fidgeted, squirmed and Derek gave a huff of amused arousal against his skin, fingertips dragging absently where they rested on his lightly haired thighs.

 

 “Mmm,” Derek murmured again, that same giddy, soft, happy sound of contentment and hunger for more all at once. He inhaled, just loud enough for Stiles to hear and Stiles let his head fall back against the bed, neck arched, lips parted in soundless gasps for air.

 

 “Can I…?” He always asked so gently when it came to things like this, as if Stiles would ever refuse him.

 

 Stiles gave a shaky nod, not trusting his voice. Because whatever Derek wanted was always good. Because he trusted him.

 

 “On your belly.” Derek’s voice was thick with heat, as it always was when they’d been apart, his hunger, his need, the wolf desperate to lay claim to Stiles, taste him, scent him wherever he could. Everywhere. Commit to all of him and reaffirm the bond between them that they never acknowledged but everyone in the world knew meant everything.

 

 Stiles pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, only to drop to his shoulders as Derek dipped his head to bite gently at his tailbone. A shocked, cut-off cry ripped from Stiles’s throat and he buried his face in the comforter, fingers curling tight as his entire body jerked forward and then back into Derek. Hot breath ghosted between his cheeks, just a hint but Stiles was already on fire with anticipation, because Derek had never done that before.

 

 They’d touched, hands, mouths, cocks, kisses but never Derek’s mouth there and never anything but a teasing, glancing caress of fingertips between his cheeks. Derek nosed down across one of the tensed globes of his ass, nipping in an unvoiced question. Stiles complied, sinking down until he was perfectly flat on the bed, legs spread, giving Derek space to nuzzle down his inner thigh and the back of his knee. Scenting him everywhere.

 

 “Derek?” he tried in a raspy, barely there choked sound that turned into an almost hurt little “ah!” when Derek grasped his cheeks, spread him open and bit him gently again, just at the sensitive place right at the top of his crack, the tender little snippet of flesh _just_ hidden by the globes of his ass, just forbidden.

 

 But not to Derek.

 

 “No,” he choked out, almost a whimper but rougher, shaky and Derek lifted his head a little.

 

 “Stiles?”

 

 “No,” Stiles gasped again, “I mean, _yes_ but…” He licked his dry lips, turning his head to rest his face, blazing with mortification and arousal both into his hands where they were bunched in the comforter. “Isn’t that…?”

 

 The tension that had seized Derek’s body drifted away with that only partially coherent reassurance. He turned his head enough to drag his lips, his blunt teeth over the shape of Stiles’s ass, just avoiding the crease. “Don’t you like it?”

 

 “You’re _killing_ me.”

 

 “Mmm,” Derek let his thumb _just_ graze the crease he’d only briefly teased before, now exposed and clenching under his gaze unhindered. “You’re so hot here.”

 

 “Oh God, you’ve got like supersenses and you’re smelling my ass and there are so many dog jokes and so many hygiene issues but I really really want you to lick me, fuck just…” Stiles’s frantic, torn rambling cut short as Derek exhaled hotly onto the twitching, exposed ring of muscle and Stiles’s words were lost to that almost hurt noise again. His hips ground into the sheets against his will and Derek used both thumbs to trace the outer shape of his entrance teasingly before pulling it taut.

 

 “You’ve just had a shower, you smell just like Stiles, I like it.”

 

 Stiles heard the unsaid words, the _‘that’s all that matters, even now it’s not just us anymore’_ and the reassurance soothed him.

 

“If you want me to stop, tell me,” Derek added.

 

 It was the epitome of the uncomplicated honesty they shared. Stiles just about managed to breathe, just about managed to convince his body to relax as Derek dipped his head to flick his tongue across the centre of his heat. His body tensed and shuddered all at once, stuttering, reluctant jerks he couldn’t quite control and he curled his fingers tight into the bedding as Derek hesitated, hot breath just _there_ but nothing else. His fingers flexed on Stiles’s ass where he held him open and Stiles pressed his forehead into the comforter, closing his eyes as he relaxed the hesitation in him, his back arching just a little.

 

 “C’mon,” he breathed into the minute space between his face and the covers. “Go all wolf on me. Eat me up.”

 The noise Derek made was torn between amusement and animal. His tongue swept up across the tight entrance, then around, circling the twitching, pink ring. He dragged his stubble across it, hearing Stiles hiss before sucking gently in teasing contrition and promise. The flat of his palms pressed Stiles open further, until there was a tight little burn where he stretched and Derek licked him from tail bone to perineum. He nuzzled, gnawing gently at his tailbone, then so softly at the place just behind his balls, blunt, strong teeth teasing so soft until Stiles had to touch himself.

 

 Twisting his head to the side, Stiles let his shoulders take his weight and he reached under to stroke himself, unable to stop. Derek gave a soft huff of appreciation against his balls before sucking one into his mouth.

 

 “Oh _God,_ ” Stiles groaned throatily, hoarse and broken, losing the last of the resistance he thought he should have rather than wanted to have and just feeling himself open utterly to Derek. In turn, he felt the last vestiges of Derek’s composure crumble. A low, rumbling growl punctuated the wet, slurps against his balls, up between his cheeks and Stiles’s fingers tightened around his cock, stroking himself in long, slow pulls. So good.

 

 Derek’s thumbs teased at the edges of his twitching hole, pulling him open for his tongue. He devoured him, wet, sloppy, hungry, growling softly. Stiles moved with it, shuddering, fucking his hand and Derek’s tongue with each rough jerk of his hips. He closed his eyes, lost himself to it, to Derek and just _felt_.

 

 “So good,” he exhaled in a long, slow whine, “So good, so good, so…”

 

 Derek’s beard scraped between his cheeks. The ferocity of his tongue, wet, hungry and pressing in and out, lathed his rim until its weak spasms dulled, relaxed like Stiles, limp and melting under the attention.

 

 “Derek…” Stiles squeezed his cock just this side of painful then let go, his breathing ragged against the fabric against his cheek. He swore he could feel his blood, his nerve endings pulsing with each teasing stab of tongue, each hungry, wet pull of that mouth on him. Sweat prickled across his back and he shuddered with it all. Then one of Derek’s thumbs pushed in, slid straight into him like he was made of butter. Derek’s fingers cupped Stiles’s balls at the same time as his thumb hooked down; massaging him so perfectly inside that he felt his head spin.

 

 “Oh…fuck, Derek _fuck me_.”

 

 “Yeah?” Derek sounded more out of it than him, and when Stiles tried to twist around to see his face, Derek was on him. He stretched up to catch Stiles neck, to ease his head to the side at an almost unnatural angle. He crushed their lips together, at the same time thumbing the tender place inside that sent tight, coiling sparks up through Stiles’s belly. He panted into Derek’s mouth, kissing through breathless noises. He didn’t even care where Derek’s mouth had been he just wanted more of him, all of him, wanted to melt into him before he went crazy from not touching enough.

 

 “You sure?” Derek murmured against his open mouth and Stiles writhed under him.

 

 He relished the heat of Derek against his back, the pressure against his prostate for a second more before he stretched forward to hook one finger into the simple wooden bedside drawer. He remembered the first time they’d messed around in this bed, like two virgins while his dad was out and Derek’s lips had done that amused twitch at the sight of the bottle of lube he’d stashed in his bag in the pharmacy all those months ago.

 

 It felt like a lifetime away. He hadn’t even been thinking of using it with Derek then, not really, it’d just been instinctivel to grab. But Derek had seen it and had looked so damn close to laughing as he’d said, _“oh thank God, I was wondering if you were ever going to dig that out of your backpack before your dad found it.”_

 It was a pretty big bottle and they’d only used it a few times to slick up hand jobs or once, when Derek had urged him grind his cock between his cheeks. It was water based and odourless but Stiles hadn’t done full penetration in years, not since that last fumble in _Beacon Hills_ with a kid as equally terrified of what was happening around them as he’d been. He had a feeling he’d need it.

 

 Stiles rolled onto his back, feeling the wet patch his leaking cock had left on the comforter. Derek held his hand out for the bottle but Stiles only grinned mischievously up at him, nipping one of the outstretched fingers before squeezing some of the lubricant into Derek’s palm.

 

 Derek’s fingers were deceptively soft but they were wide and Stiles let out a long breath as one slid into him. Derek’s face was flushed and his hair mussed in this adorable way that made him look so human and soft, his eyes bright and a light sheen of spittle covering his lips. He watched the place where his second finger eased into Stiles, so loose and soft from Derek’s mouth, gliding in easily. He cast teasing glances over Stiles’s hot spot until Stiles’s toes curled. When they did, Derek met his eyes with a sheepish little smile.

 

 “Gonna do this to you, too, like…tomorrow or real soon,” Stiles mumbled, feeling like he was high as Derek curled against his side, fingers still pressing in and out of Stiles’s clutching heat. He rocked the palm of his hand against his perineum until Stiles was rising up into each little pump of his hand. God, they’d done this before, with Derek’s fingers in him but only as a little teasing push toward orgasm with his mouth on Stiles’s cock or his hand wrapped around it. Never like this, never when Stiles’s skin and nerves were already sparking with need for more, from being teased and driven to madness.

 

 Derek pressed against him until Stiles was half tilted toward his side, Derek nosing intimately against his cheek, his ear. Stiles reached back, curling one arm around Derek’s head to thread his fingers through his hair and hold him close. He studied what he could see of him, drinking all of him in before letting his eyes fall closed.

 

 “Want it, all of it,” Derek agreed, the delay of his response speaking more of his desire rather than his reluctance. He sounded so relaxed and Stiles never tired of seeing him like this, especially knowing it was him that caused it.

 

 When he drew his fingers back it was with a bereft sound in his throat, leaving Stiles weird and empty and he tipped one leg forward as he felt Derek slicking himself behind him. “Like this, yeah?”

 

 “Mmm, then I can hold onto you.”

 

 Stiles smiled to himself, turning his head slightly into Derek’s arm under his head to hide it, because he knew what Derek really meant was, _‘so I can hold you’._

 

 The first press of Derek’s burning heat made Stiles gasp into his bicep. He felt Derek’s lips part against the nape of his neck in a soundless groan as he flexed his hips, fingers grasping Stiles’s that lay close to his head as his other hand helped guide him in.

 

 When Stiles clenched instinctively around the head of his cock he let out a choked noise and Stiles panted, trying to remember how to function, how to do this. It was so much. It didn’t hurt but it was uncomfortable and he squirmed without really moving, trying to push out and stay still and relax all at once because Derek was hot and huge and so, so gentle and he wanted this more than anything.

 

 “Okay?” Derek’s voice was a barely audible whisper, hoarse with overwhelm.

 

 Stiles nodded into his arm, lifting his upper leg up to open himself up, hooking it behind Derek’s legs for leverage as Derek’s hand splayed on his belly. He stroked up and down in that maddening way to connect them. When his fingers dipped toward his groin Stiles covered it with his own.

 

 “Mm-wait,” he panted, feeling it all so much. “Not yet just…just let me…” He pushed down and Derek slid in wetly. So much lube. So wet and huge and pulsing hot, hotter than a branding iron and Stiles felt every inch.

 

 It was awkward at first, Derek still and Stiles twitching his hips in the smallest of movements, adjusting, feeling Derek in him. He moved just enough to make Derek pant against his neck and to let his muscles remember. Except it had never felt like this. The looseness Derek’s mouth had instilled in his tight heat helped. He shifted all the way down after rocking up almost all the way off, humping back into Derek in tiny little jerks until he felt his muscles give and suck. They drew Derek into him until Stiles just exhaled in a throaty sigh into Derek’s arm, just as the discomfort eased into a good, easy, slow glide rather than tight resistance.

 

 “Mmm,” he managed again, fingers tightening in Derek’s by his head. His other hand eased down to help hold his leg up, open himself up for Derek, to wordlessly give Derek’s hand, still resting over his belly permission to move again. Blunt fingernails dragged through Stiles’s pubic hair, scritching teasingly at the base of his cock, then back up, as Derek started to rock forward into him.

 “You’re hot inside,” Derek mumbled dizzily into his ear, “wanted this, wanted to be inside you, so close, closer than…”

 

 “Yeah, close,” Stiles gasped out and later he would marvel that he was the one lost for words while Derek was murmuring non-stop in his ear as if he couldn’t help it, like he’d been unable to speak to Stiles for two days and now he couldn’t stop.

 

 “Oh God,” Stiles choked out as hot, tingly, melting heat spread through him from the inside. It was like he’d hit melting point and now he was simmering down into a puddle of heat around Derek, in the safety of his grasp.

 

 Whether he’d inherited his pack’s instincts somewhat from being with them for some time, or his needs just ran the same way, he let his urges turn his head a fraction more to graze his teeth across Derek’s bicep. Derek made an appreciative noise against his skin, grinding into him and his hand splayed flat on Stiles’s belly to hold him tight to his body as he fucked into him, faster now.

 

 “I can hear the noises your ass makes when I fuck into you,” Derek growled and Stiles’s cock _throbbed_.

 

 “Touch my dick,” Stiles demanded, rolling his hips back to drive himself onto Derek’s hardness, taking more. When Derek’s fingers wrapped around his neglected erection it only made him move faster, fucking Derek’s hand and his ass back with each hard thrust. The sound of their bodies meeting, that even he could hear now, punctuated every time they came back together.

 

 Stiles craned his neck back sideways to try and glimpse Derek, only to see his eyes shut, drinking in the sensation. Stiles brushed their lips together awkwardly without ever breaking the rhythm of their bodies and Derek kissed him back with hungry passion.

 

 “Look at me,” Stiles breathed and Derek’s eyes flew open, glazed and dark green-grey with lust. The sight of it coiled down into Stiles’s belly and tightened.

 

 Derek’s fingers stroked him faster, driving him quicker toward the edge and harder back into him, until he was groaning open-mouthed into Stiles’s kiss. With a harsh groan he bore Stiles over flat onto his belly, drawing out with a pained sound and pushing one of Stiles’s legs up under him and to the side.

 

 Stiles twisted his head to look at him as best he could, cock hard and throbbing between his body and the bed, ass open and hungry as Derek spread him open, looked down at the pink, gaping ring of muscle. Derek’s body was heaving with every breath he took, like he was barely in control of himself. His skin was sweat-slicked, muscles tense and taut and his expression dark with lust and focus as he spread Stiles open.

 

 “More lube,” Stiles managed huskily, letting his head fall back on the bed. He squirmed at the generous trail of cool fluid that splashed against his crack, oozed into the open entrance to his body, greedily drinking it in. Derek’s thumb smeared it across the sensitive nerves around his hole with a low, reverent sound, before smoothing more across his own length and pushing back in.

 

 He fucked Stiles’s entrance shallowly for a few moments, relishing in the grasp around the head of his cock, dragging wet, messy sounds out with every tug outward that left Stiles open and bereft. Stiles knew he was drinking in the sight of him welcoming Derek into his body with each move, then grasping hungrily for him when he drew out, as much as the sensation of pressing into him.

 

 Then, suddenly, Derek sank into him, all the way in, his body following to cover his back and drive a punched out sound from Stiles’s lungs. Stiles squirmed without really moving, wanting more but relishing in the fullness. Derek’s arm braced beside his head, fingers carding through Stiles’s sweaty hair as his other arm tugged Stiles’s hips up just enough. He drove into him then, fucking him hard, fast, pressing his nose to the side of Stiles’s neck and just holding onto him like that, pounding inside until Stiles felt like he couldn’t breathe.

 

 Stiles reached back, urging Derek faster, harder, eyes squeezing shut as he just let go and _felt._ His cock pulsed hard, bobbing with each hard thrust and drooling messily across the bed, slapping welt against his belly. So close. He cried out at the perfect, overwhelming pressure of it building in him like a dam ready to burst, everything too tight and too hot.

 

 Derek’s hand on his hip shifted to go for his cock and Stiles cried out in spite of how much he ached.

 

 “No, I think I can…a bit more, I think…”

 

 Derek’s length drove into him and Stiles’s cock burst against his belly and the sheets, without a hand on it. It was devastating, perfect. He swore his whole head swam with the rush of heat and intimacy and overwhelming emotion and need. He felt himself collapse against the bed, limp and shuddering, feeling only the places Derek touched him and nowhere else. He was still shaking with spasms, breathing hard even after Derek came with a shaky, sloppy kiss against his neck.

 

 The hand on his hip slid under him, up through the mess to lay flat on his torso. There Derek held Stiles tight to his body, pulling him back with him and staying inside as he spooned up behind him.

 

 “Sssh,” Derek whispered softly, stroking across his messy stomach and chest as Stiles tried to remember how to breathe. In his inquisitive teenage years, he’d read somewhere that an orgasm without a hand on your cock could be intense, rare but able to unleash the floodgates of emotion and Stiles wholeheartedly agreed. He felt utterly sated, spent and raw. But so, so good, like he was floating on a cloud, a delicate cloud that could be so easily blown away and out from under him when he was most vulnerable. But Derek was there and he wasn’t worried. He was safe.

 

 They had this.

 

 “I’ve never felt anything like that,” Stiles managed after a long time, proud of his coherency. He was so, so high on Derek. It was a good feeling. He covered Derek’s hand with his own, wincing at the stickiness but unable to care.

 

 “Are you okay?” Derek sounded as replete as him, if a little concerned.

 

 “Mmm,” Stiles assured him, feeling like he might drift off. He might have dozed, because he came back to himself with a little jerk and felt Derek hold him closer in answer. Stiles licked his kiss-bruised lips as his mind started to work again and wander.

 

 “Derek?”

 

 “NMyeah?” The sound was half-smothered in Stiles’s shoulder.

 

 Stiles smirked, even if there was a distinct gross stickiness oozing between them. “Am I your mate?”

 

 Derek groaned and Stiles could tell he was blushing without even looking at him, just from the sound of his voice. “You’re not allowed to talk to Peter anymore.”

 

 With a low chuckle, Stiles rolled over to face Derek. Yes, definitely sticky wetness oozing from between his cheeks, smeared across the bed. Definitely disgusting, definitely glad he had a spare set in the drawer. In spite of that though, he felt a lightness through his entire body, a bone-deep calmness and Derek was blushing and sex-mussed and so beautifully his that he beamed brightly at him until he had to answer properly.

 

 “It’s not really said anymore,” Derek admitted, eyes shining as they roved Stiles’s face, looking as relaxed as Stiles felt. “It’s…sort of a cliché now, outdated for our culture. I…can’t think of a human alternative to the phrase, but…”

 

 “But?” Stiles prompted, his own eyes bright with mischief and Derek’s lips quirked. He leaned in, smoothing their lips together in a soft, lazy kiss that ended in a little nuzzle that was so normal for them.

 

 “It’s still…the term isn’t used, but what it means, the connection, the bond. It’s not…not like some magical soul bond predetermined by fate it just…feels that way.”

 

 “Magical?” Stiles prompted, still definitely high on Derek and post-orgasmic perfectness.

 

 “And more,” Derek answered, his face still burning, though the embarrassment didn’t still his tongue. “I feel like I want to be with you, all the time, like I want to talk to you about nothing at all, want to hear you rambling at me, in that way you do. Touch you. Scent you. You understand werewolf culture and what you don’t get you _want_ to get, for me. And you…you _move_ like a wolf sometimes, act like one. You’re kinda funny, in this way that only I seem to get and you’re a total asshole, except you’re not and I can’t imagine ever not wanting all of that. All of you.”

 Stiles stared at him. Derek was so quiet and stern for the outside world, even to some of his pack so sometimes it was still a shock to hear him explain himself so openly, holding nothing back when they were alone like this. He usually opened up most in bed, like this, just after they’d been together. Intimacy brought all the walls down for him to be utterly honest and afraid or worried or happy.

 

 “So you don’t call them mates but you do have them,” Stiles said and it wasn’t a question, but a statement. His gaze drifted down to Derek’s lips teasingly, before gliding back up to his eyes once more. “Am I yours?”

 Derek gave a playful snarl and rolled them across the bed.

 

 Later, when they finally managed to crawl out of bed, Stiles came back into his room after a quick wash in the sink to see Derek pulling on his clothes, right next to the box he’d nearly tripped over earlier. “So, do I get my present now?”

 

 Derek turned just as he pulled on his shirt to glance at Stiles before following his gaze to the box. He looked nervous now and that only piqued Stiles’s curiosity more.

 

 He tugged on a clean pair of boxers and then his jeans, all on the way to the box at the foot of the bed. Derek only watched him with apprehension as Stiles lowered himself onto his haunches.

 

 He wanted Stiles to like it, Stiles realised and he smiled up at him in reassurance before pulling the cardboard box open. It was weathered but sturdy, old but it appeared Derek had taken care of it on the journey back. Heavy, Stiles realised as it shifted when he opened it. And when he did open it, his eyes widened and his heart skipped.

 

 “Derek…”

 

 “There was an old store mostly in tact in the town we scouted to. There was a whole untouched stock of them, too many to bring them all back but Scott helped me pick the ones you’d like most.”

 

 The box was full of comic books. He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t seen one since they’d left _Beacon Hills_. He let his fingers trace the edges of the box, before reaching in to run his fingers along the front cover of one of the issues of _Batman_.

 

 “I’ll have to take you next time, there was a lot of medical equipment we could use back at a clinic there too so we’re going to make another trip but I…I knew you’d like it.”

 

 Stiles lifted his head to meet Derek’s gaze and if there had ever been any doubt, the last of it ebbed away, washed clean by the look on Derek’s face. He loved him. And he showed him and told him in every way but the actual words but it didn’t matter because it was as clear as the moonlight streaming in through the window.

 

 Stiles though, he had never been good at subtleties. He rose to his feet and launched himself at Derek, clasping his face in his hands and bringing their lips together in a clash of emotions. It felt like all of it had been building to this point since the moment they first laid eyes on each other across the lake that day. When they parted, it was only for their lips, with Stiles still wrapped around him, forehead resting against Derek’s as he just breathed him in.

 

 “I love you,” he whispered into the small space between them, part of him still flying. _Always_ flying with Derek. “You saved my life.” He’d changed it, helped him save himself which was even more important.

 

 “Me too,” Derek murmured softly and Stiles knew when their lips met again that he reciprocated all of it.

 

*

 

 The settlement was relatively quiet as they made their way to the pack house a little later. Most people were inside, enjoying their evening meal but there were still a few people milling about, finishing up before heading home. Everything calm and quiet. No doubt their world would change someday, as they made more constant contact with the other survivors out there, but whatever winds of change were heading their way, they would weather them.

 

 The sound of excited chatter and music filtered from the Hale house, as always, subtle but easily distinguishable in the quiet heart of the settlement. The windows glowed softly in the darkness, filling Stiles with a sense of home. His dad was in there, his pack too, his family and Derek’s fingers were entangled with his.

 

 From the end of the street, they could see the light flooding out from the glass frontage of the entrance, a warm, bright pool in the dark. Before they could even turn fully onto the street, however, Stiles could just about see the doors being flung open and a cluster of shapes spilling out onto the street, just about visible in the darkness. But even without heightened sight or smell, Stiles could sense the pack anywhere.

 

 His skin hummed in that telltale way that signalled their approach. Though he’d only been with them last night for dinner, there was something about being greeted by them like this, fully shifted, a true pack of wolves bolting toward them with Derek at his side. It felt like the instincts in him were singing at the welcome as readily as if he were a wolf too.

 

 The pack greeted them with yips and snarls of excitement, large bodies brushing against them, muzzles scenting as they circled, bumping each other playfully. Derek glanced to Stiles briefly, then shrugged off his clothes, shifted in the subtle light and joined his family in a tangle of playful nips and fur. He bounded slightly on the spot when Cora wagged her tail and Stiles laughed, grinning widely at the family so carefree and relaxed.

 

 At that moment, Stiles saw his dad making his way up the street with Melissa McCall at his side, saw Scott shrugging out of his shirt and letting the change take him so he could join the fray. Stiles could tell from the way his dad bobbed his head, the way he watched that he was smiling.

 

 Derek leapt sideways, dodging Laura as she nipped at his ear, welcoming the grey wolf that was Scott butting gently against his side before turning to Stiles. Stiles knew the light in his eyes even before he gave a low chuff. Accepting the challenge, he turned, speeding down the street as fast as the light from the houses permitted. His heart pounded and his adrenaline spiked as his face broke into a grin. He heard the pack following, felt their proximity even before they bolted passed him, chasing each other in their own way of welcoming their alpha home.

 

 They let their instincts run wild and Stiles ran right alongside them.

 

 As they ran, Stiles saw a few of the human kids bolt out from their houses to join the run, shrieking with glee and imitating the howling. Boyd dove back to run beside them, weaving in and out of them to their delight.

 

 Derek kept pace with Stiles, the others pulling back to their level and then darting off again, howls of delight carrying through the open space of the fields they ran through. When at last Stiles’s legs and lungs burned in the most wondrous exertion, he staggered to a halt. He let himself fall flat onto a bed of wild grass at the end of one of the fields, smiling up at the blanket of stars above as he panted for breath.

 

 The howls of the pack grew slightly more distant but the connection pulsed as strongly as ever and Stiles let his arms fall limp on his heaving chest as Derek’s human face came into view above him.

 

 “Hey, you’re blocking my view,” Stiles panted, still beaming. “Also, you’re gonna get grass stains on your bare ass.”

 

 Derek gave a wolfish grin and leaned down for an upside-down kiss before rolling onto his side in the grass beside Stiles. Stiles kept his gaze skyward, relishing in the heat of Derek beside him, the way his fingers entwined with Stiles’s own as his breathing slowly calmed.

 

 “One day we might not even need walls,” he said softly to the night and Derek’s fingers squeezed his gently.

 

 What seemed like a lifetime ago, Derek had expanded Stiles’s tiny, quiet world. Now his world was about to get bigger again and just like before, they’d do it together. It was certainly not going to be easy, but it wasn’t an impossible dream, this peace they’d found. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go without a fight. Whatever inevitably tried to stand in their way and shatter the way of life here wouldn’t have it easy. He and Derek made a formidable team. With their pack, they were unstoppable.

 

 Slowly, Stiles pushed upright, rolling slightly as he did so he could look down at Derek. Those eyes he adored, that had been gazing heavenward turned to him instinctively, soft and bright, shining with the stars all for him. Stiles smiled as he drank in the sight.

 

 “Ready to rebuild the world with me?”

 

 Derek reached up, cupping his fingers behind Stiles’s neck. He held his gaze for a long moment, stroking his warm skin reverently, before tugging him down into a kiss.

 

 

 THE END

* * *

 

_Thank you again for all your support! I hope you enjoyed the ending. I have so enjoyed writing this fic._

  
_As I said I'm signed up for the Steter Reverse Bang (which I will post here on posting day) and I have two sterek fics lined up after that to work on. Please subscribe if any of that sounds good to you :)_

  
_If you want to say hi or make prompt/requests (which I welcome heartily) come find me on[Tumblr](http://hyperlittlenori.tumblr.com)._

 


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